"It looks and feels like money!" panted the widow. "Hurry up with the light. I wonder if my prayer has been heard at last."
"Hearing it and answering are two different things; the whole neighborhood has heard it often enough," growled Sam, as he fumed impatiently over the hot coals, fairly hidden in a stifling cloud of tallow-smoke.
"Here's a match," said Virginia, who had found one near the clock, and she struck it on the top of one of the dog-irons, and applied it to the dripping wick. At the same instant the hot tallow in the coals and ashes burst into flame, lighting up every corner and crevice of the great, ill-furnished room. Sam, holding the candle, bent over Jane's hands as they nervously fumbled the money.
"Ten-dollar bills!" she cried. "Oh, count 'em, Sam! I can't. They stick together, she's wadded 'em so tight."
With almost painful deliberation Sam counted the money, licking his rough thumb as he raised each bill.
"It's a hundred dollars all right enough," he said, turning the roll over to his sister-in-law. "The only thing that's worrying me is who's had sech a sudden enlargement of the heart in this section."
"Virginia, who gave you this money?" Mrs. Hemingway asked, her face abeam, her eyes gleaming with joy.
"I told you I was bound by a promise not to tell you or anybody else," Virginia awkwardly replied, as she avoided their combined stare.
"Oh, I smell a great big dead rat under the barn!" Sam laughed. "I'd bet my Sunday-go-to-meeting hat I know who sent it."
"You do?" exclaimed the widow. "Who do you think it was, Sam?"