There's no use dwelling on unpleasantness. And there's no use tellin' what Ike Hamilton said. I'd be liable to the law, if I did tell it, and, besides, I've been away from seafarin' so long that my memory for such language ain't as good as 'twas. Ike wa'n't only mad now: he was ha'f crazy, and pale and scared-lookin' besides. The interview ended by my takin' him by the arm and leadin' him to the door.

"You get out of here," I told him, "and I'll leave this door open so's to sweeten the air after you. That letter of yours has turned up missin' and I'm mighty sorry. I'll find it, though, or die a-tryin'. Meanwhile, unless you can behave like a decent human bein'—which I doubt—you'll find it turrible unhealthy for you on these premises. Understand?"

I cal'late he understood, for he waited till he was out of reach afore he answered. Then he turned and snarled at me like a kicked dog.

"By the Almighty, Zeb Snow," he says, "this is the wust day's work you ever did! That letter's wuth hundreds of dollars to me and I'll sue you for every cent. And, more'n that," he says, "this is the last straw that'll break your back as postmaster of this town. You're done! and don't you forget it!"

I wa'n't likely to forget it—not to any consider'ble extent.

Well, all the rest of that day and for the next two days, Mary and Peters and I hunted high and low for that letter; but we couldn't find it. I was worried, Peters was worried, and Mary Blaisdell seemed the most worried of any of us. Ike Hamilton come in every few hours, and, though he blustered and threatened a whole lot, he kept a civil tongue in his head, rememberin', I cal'late, what I said to him when I showed him the door. Apparently he hadn't told any of his cronies about his loss, for nobody else said a word about it to me. This was queer, for I expected the news would be all over town by this time.

Peters asked a lot of questions and I done my best to satisfy him. I showed him the exact place where I laid the letter down afore I went to the front of the store to meet him, and he remembered, same as I did, that the door to the mail room was locked when we come back to it. And we'd stayed in that room together until Mary came and we went to dinner. Nobody but Mary and I had keys to the room, either.

Course I thought of Sim Kelley and how mad he was because I took the letter away from him, and Peters and I cross-questioned him pretty sharp. But he told a straight yarn and stuck to it. He hadn't seen the letter since I took it. He'd delivered the notice to Ike and Ike had said he'd call and get the letter that afternoon. Well, all that seemed to be true, and, besides, there was no way Sim could have got hold of the thing if he'd wanted to.

"No use," says I, when the questionin' was over and Sim had cleared out, protestin' injured innocence and almost cryin'. "No use," says I, "I cal'late he's tellin' the truth for once in his life. I guess his skirts are clear."

"Maybe so," says Peters. "His story is straight enough; but he don't look you in the face; I don't like that."

"That's nothin'," I said. "He'd have to get 'round the corner to look a body in the face, as cross-eyed as he is."

Mary Blaisdell spoke up then. "If this letter shouldn't be found at all, Mr. Peters," says she, "what effect would it have on Cap'n Zeb's position as postmaster?"

Peters was pretty solemn, and he shook his head.

"Well," he says, "to be perfectly frank with you, Cap'n, it might have consider'ble effect. From what I've seen of you and this office, generally speakin', my report to headquarters would be a very favorable one. Your records and accounts are straight and the place is neat and well kept. But your opponent's petition charges that several letters have been lost already. This loss comes at a very bad time and it might be considered serious."

I'd realized all this, but it didn't help me much to hear him say it. I didn't make any answer, but Mary asked another question.

"But if," she says, slow, "it should turn out that the Cap'n was not to blame at all? If someone else had lost that letter? He wouldn't be removed then?"

"No, certainly not. That is, not if my report counted for anything."

"I see," says she; and she didn't speak to us again that afternoon. Peters, though, had more questions to ask. What sort of a letter was this, anyhow? And did I have any idea what was in it?

I told him that I didn't really know much, but, bein' a Yankee, I was subject to the guessin' habit. Ike Hamilton had been buyin' stocks up to Boston and this letter had a broker firm's name printed on the envelope. My guess was that there was some certificates, or such, inside.

"I see," he says. "That would explain what he said about its value. So he's been speculatin', hey?"

"So Sim Kelley hinted. But where the money comes from I don't see. Old Ichabod don't furnish it, I'll bet a dollar. The old critter's got cramps in the pocketbook worse than he has in his back."

"That was the old feller you pointed out to me the other day," he says. "I haven't seen him since. Where is he?"

"Back in bed with the rheumatiz, so I hear. Guess his cruise down town was too much for him."

Well, the rest of our talk didn't amount to much and I went home that night pretty blue and discouraged. I didn't care so much about bein' postmaster, but it hurt my pride to be bounced for bad seamanship. I'd never wrecked a craft afore in my life.

Next mornin' I come to the store at my usual time, but Mary was late, for a wonder. When she did come she looked so pale and used up that I was troubled.

"Mary," says I, "what's the matter? Ain't sick, are you?"

"Oh, no!" says she. "I—I didn't sleep well, that's all. I'm all right."

"But, Mary," I says, "I—"

"Please excuse me, Cap'n Zeb," she cut in. "I'm very busy."

She'd never used that tone to me afore, and I was set back about forty mile. Why she should be so frosty I couldn't see. I went out to the platform and paced the quarter deck, thinkin'. I was down at the heel anyway, and I thought a whole lot of fool things. I was goin' to lose my job and so I s'posed that, after all, I'd ought to expect my friends to shake me. There's a proverb about rats leavin' a leaky vessel. But Mary Blaisdell!! I cal'late I come as nigh wishin' I was dead as ever I did in my life.

'Twas almost eleven afore the Peters man showed up. He was walkin' brisk and smilin' a little.

"Well," says I, "you're lookin' a heap more chipper than I feel. What are you grinnin' about?"

"Oh, just for instance," he says. "Is Miss Blaisdell in the office?"

"Guess so. She was awhile ago. Yes, she's there. Why?"

"I want to see her—and you, too. Come on."

He led the way to the mail room. Mary was there, workin' at her books. She looked up when we come in, and her face was whiter than ever. I forgot all about my "rat" thoughts and the rest of it.

"Mary," says I, anxious, "you are under the weather. Why don't you go home?"

She held up her hand and stopped me.

"Please don't," she says.

Then, turnin' to Peters: "Mr. Peters, I want to speak to you. And to you, too, Cap'n Zeb. I—I've got somethin' that I must tell you."

'Twa'n't so much what she said as the way she said it. I looked at Peters and he looked at me. I cal'late we was both wonderin' what sort of lightnin' was goin' to strike now.

She didn't leave us to wonder long. She went right on, speakin' quick, as if she wanted to get it over with.

"Mr. Peters," she says, "last night you told me that, if it should be proved that Cap'n Zeb had no part in losin' that letter, if it wasn't his fault at all, the postmastership wouldn't be taken from him. You meant that, didn't you?"

Peters looked queer enough. "Why, yes," he says, "I did. But how—"

"Mr. Peters," she went on, in the same hurried way, "I lost that letter."

I don't know what Peters did then, but I know that my knees give from under me and I flopped down in the armchair.

"You? You, Mary!" says I.

Peters seemed to be as much flabbergasted as I was. He rubbed his forehead.

"You lost it?" he says, slow.

"Yes," says she. "That is, I—I destroyed it by accident. It was while you two were at dinner. I was clearin' up the sortin' table and—and puttin' the waste paper in the stove. I—I must have taken the letter with the other things."

"Nonsense!" I sung out. Peters didn't say nothin'.

"Nonsense!" I said again. "You don't know that 'twas—"

"But I do," she interrupted. "I—I saw it burnin' and—and it was too late to get it out. It was my fault altogether. No one else is to blame at all."

If I hadn't been settin' down already you could have knocked me over with a feather. 'Twas an accident, of course; anybody might have done such a thing; but what I couldn't understand was why she hadn't told me of it afore. That didn't seem like her at all.

"Well!" I says; "well!"

Peters had transferred his rubbin' from his forehead to his chin.

"Miss Blaisdell," says he, quiet, "why didn't you tell us sooner?"

"That's all right," I cut in, quick. "I don't blame her for not tellin'. I cal'late that she felt so bad about it that she couldn't make up her mind to tell right off. That was it, wa'n't it, Mary?"

She didn't look up, but sat playin' with a pen-holder.

"Yes," she says, "that was it."

"All right then," says I. "It was an accident, and if anybody's to blame it's me. I shouldn't have left the letter there."

Then she looked up. "Of course you're not to blame," she says, awful earnest. "It was my fault entirely. You know it was, Mr. Peters. It was my fault and I must take the consequences. I will resign my place as assistant and—"

"Resign!" I sung out. "Resign! Well, I guess not!"

"But I shall. Of course I shall. Mr. Peters, you see that it wasn't Cap'n Snow's fault, don't you? Don't you?"

"Yes," says Peters, short.

"Nonsense!" I roared. "He don't see no such thing. Mary, I don't care—"

She held up her hand. "Please don't talk to me now," she begged. "Please—not now."

I looked at Peters. There was a look in his eyes, almost as if he was smilin' inside. I could have punched his head for it.

"But, Mary—" I begun.

"Please don't talk to me," she begged, almost cryin'. "Please go away and leave me now. Please."

I cal'late I shouldn't have gone; fact is, I know I shouldn't; but that government investigator put his hand on my arm.

"Cap'n," he says, "come with me."

"With you?" I snapped. "Why?"

"Because I want you to. It's important. I won't keep you long."

I went, but he'll never know how much I wanted to kick him. As I shut the door of the mail room I saw poor Mary's head go down on her arms on the desk.

Peters led me out to the front of the store, where he come to anchor on a shoe-case.

"Set down," says he, pattin' the case alongside of him.

"I don't feel like settin'," I says, ugly. "And I tell you, Mr. Peters—"

"No," says he, "I'm goin' to tell you this time. Or, if I'm not, the feller I told to be here at half past eleven will. Yes ... here he comes now."

In at the door comes Sim Kelley, and, if ever a chap looked as if he was marchin' to be hung, he did. His eyes was red and his face was white under the freckles.

"Here—here I be, Mr. Peters," he stammered.

"Yes, I see you 'be,'" says Peters, dry as a chip. "All right. Now you can tell Cap'n Snow what you told me this mornin'."

Sim looked at me, and at the government man. He was shakin' all over.

"Aw, Cap'n Zeb," he bust out, "don't be too hard on me. Don't put me in jail! I know I hadn't ought to have taken that letter, but you riled me up when you told me I couldn't be trusted with it. Ike pays me to fetch the mail. And he told me he was expectin' an important letter from them stockbrokers. So I—"

Well, there's no use tryin' to spin the yarn the way he did. 'Twas all mixed up with prayers about not puttin' him in jail, and what would his ma say, and "pleases" and "oh, dont's" and such. B'iled down and skimmed it amounted to this: He'd seen me lay that Hamilton letter on the sortin' table, saw it when he come back to tell me that Peters had arrived. After I'd gone out to the platform he was struck with an idea. He would take that letter to Ike, just to show that he could be trusted, and, besides Ike had promised him fifty cents for lookin' out for it and fetchin' it to him direct. He had a key to the Hamilton box and the letter laid right back of that box. All he had to do was to reach through the box to the table, take the letter, and lock up again. So he did it, and put the letter in his overcoat inside pocket.

"And—and—" he finished up, almost blubberin', "there was a great big hole in that pocket and I didn't know it."

"I did," says I, involuntary, so to speak. "Never mind. Heave ahead."

"And the letter must have dropped out of it. When I got a little ways up the road I found 'twas gone. I didn't dast tell Ike or you. I—I didn't dast to. Ike would kill me if I told him, and—and—Oh, please, Cap'n Zeb, don't put me in jail! I don't know where the letter is. Honest, I don't! Please ..." and so on.

Peters cut him short. "There!" says he, "that'll do. Kelley, you go out on the platform and wait till we need you. Go ahead! Shut up—and go."

Sim went, but I cal'late if we'd listened we could have heard the platform boards tremblin' underneath where he was standin'.

Peters looked at me and grinned. 'Twas my time to rub my forehead.

"Well!" says I. "Well, I—I.... Is he lyin'?"

"Didn't act like it, did he?"

"No-o, he didn't. But—but, if he took that letter, how did it get back onto that sortin' table?"

"How do you know it did?"

"How do I know! Course it got back there! Didn't Mary say—"

"Wait a minute," he put in. "How do you explain that, Cap'n?"

He was holdin' out somethin' that he'd took from his pocket. I grabbed it. 'Twas the regular receipt for that registered letter, and 'twas signed by Ichabod Hamilton, Junior.

I looked at that receipt and then at him. The paddin' in my head that, up to then, I'd complimented by callin' brains was whirlin' as if somebody was stirrin' it. I couldn't say a word. He laughed out loud.

"Don't have a fit, Cap'n Snow," he says. "It's simple enough. What you told me yesterday about the firm of Hamilton and Co. put me wise to the real answer to the riddle. I remembered that you pointed out Hamilton to me on the street when you and I were on the way to that hotel where we dined the noon of my arrival. He was on his way home then and he had been somewhere in this vicinity. There was a chance that he had been here at the office. This mornin' I went to his house and found him in bed. He was full of rheumatism and groans, but fuller still of the Evil One. I told him I knew he'd got his partner's registered letter—a bluff of course—and he didn't take the trouble to deny it. Seems Sim Kelley, with the mail box, passed him right here by the store platform. As they passed each other the letter fell from Kelley's overcoat pocket. The old man picked it up, intendin' to call to Kelley and give it back to him. When he saw the address he didn't."

He stopped then, waitin' for me to say somethin', I s'pose. But I couldn't say anything. My head was fuller of stir-about than ever, and I just stared at him with my mouth open.

"When he saw the address—and the name of the brokerage firm—he didn't. He took that letter home and opened it. You see, the old feller is nobody's fool, even if his rheumatism has kept him from active business for the last few months. He had suspected his nephew of speculatin' and here was the proof, a hundred shares of cheap minin' stock, and a letter sayin' that two hundred more had been bought on a margin. Young Hamilton had been stockjobbin' with the firm's money."

"My—soul!" was all I could say.

"Yes; well, old Ichabod is—ha! ha!—a queer character. His rheumatism had come back and he was waitin' to get better afore he took the matter up with his partner. 'What I'll say and do to that young pup is a well man's job,' he told me. We had a long talk and it ended in his sendin' for Ike. As soon as the young chap came I cleared out—that is, after I got this receipt signed. That bedroom was too sulphurous for me. I could smell brimstone even in the front yard. Cap'n, I guess you needn't worry about your rival candidate for postmaster. He's got troubles enough of his own."

I got up, slow and deliberate, from that shoe-case.

"But—but—" I stuttered.

"Yes? Anything that I haven't made clear?"

"Anything? Why! if all this yarn of yours is so—.... But it can't be so! Why did Mary burn that letter?"

"She didn't."

"But she said she did."

"I know. Well, Cap'n, if you'll remember when we talked, the three of us, yesterday, I hinted that unless you were cleared of blame in this affair you might be removed from office."

"I know, but.... Hey? You mean that she lied and put the blame on herself, so as to save me? So's I'd keep my job?"

"Looks that way to a man up a tree, doesn't it?"

"But why? Why should she sacrifice herself for—for me?"

Peters bit the end off of a cigar. "That," says he, "don't come under the head of government business."

Mary was still at her desk when I walked into the mail room. I put my hand on her shoulder.

"Mary," says I, "I know all about it."

She looked at me. Her eyes were wet, and I cal'late mine wa'n't as dry as a sand bank in July.

"You know?" she says.

"Yes," says I. And I told her the yarn. Afore I got through the color had come back to her cheeks.

"Then you did leave it on the sortin' table after all," she says, almost in a whisper.

"Course I did! Didn't I say so?"

"Yes; but Cap'n Zeb, I saw you put that letter in your overcoat pocket. I saw you do it, myself."

So there 'twas. I'd forgot to tell her about my mistake in the overcoats and she thought I'd lost the letter and didn't know it.

"And so," says I, after I'd explained, "you thought I'd lost it and yet you took the blame all on yourself. You risked your place and told a lie just to save me, Mary. Why did you do it?"

"How could I help it?" she says. "You've been so good to me and so kind."

"Good and kind be keelhauled!" I sung out. "Mary, my goodness and kindness wouldn't explain a thing like that. Oh, Mary, don't let's have another misunderstandin'. I'm crazy maybe to think of such a thing, and I'm ten years older than you, and you'll be throwin' yourself away, but, do you care enough for me to—"

She got up from her desk, all flustered like.

"It's mail time," she says. "I—I must—"

But 'twa'n't mail I was interested in just then. I caught her afore she could get away.

"Could you, Mary?" I pleaded. She wouldn't look at me, so I put my hand under her chin and tipped her head back so I could see her face. 'Twas as red as a spring peony, and her eyes were wetter than ever. But they were shinin' behind the fog.

Well, about three that afternoon, we were alone together in the mail room. Peters, who had as much common sense as anybody ever I see, had gone for a walk.

Mary was thinkin' things over and says she, "But it was too bad," she says, "that all the worry and trouble had to come on you just because of that foolish Sim Kelley. I'm so sorry."

"Sorry!" says I. "I'm goin' to give Sim a ten-dollar bill next time I see him. If I gave him a million 'twould be a cheap price for what I've got by his buttin' in. Sorry! I ain't sorry, I tell you that!"

And I've never been sorry since, either.