“You drive me mad! Can you give me no clue?”
“None in the world;—you ought to have written to us.”
“Write to you?—why should I write?”
“Why, to warn us against giving up the goods to anybody except under an order, with the same signature as that in your letter: then even if a forgery were committed, by a comparison of hands—don't you see?—”
“My good fellow!” interrupted the disconsolate and bewildered Godfrey, “you know not what you've done. This is a horrid act: it will be the death of me; and perhaps you may live to repent ever having seen this unlucky day. There was a lady in the chest.”
The clerk turned his large dull eyes upon Godfrey, and after a long and deliberate stare of wonder, exclaimed, “Dead or alive?”
“Alive; alive, I hope that is,—alive, I mean, of course.—Do you take me for a body-snatcher? If you have a spark of pity in your bosom, you will put me in the way of tracing the villain who has inflicted these agonies upon me. What can I do?”
“Why, if there's a lady in the case—”
“There is, I declare;—I solemnly protest there is.”
“Young or old?” “Young—young, to be sure.”