“The notion of selling my uncle Joseph’s snuff-box in any possible circumstances almost made me speechless. ‘What!’ I repeated. ‘Sell it?--_sell_ it? It would be a sinful sacrilege!’ “His face quite brightened when I said this, and he replied, ‘Yes, of course it would; I think so myself, ma’am; but I fancied you thought otherwise. In that case, ma’am, not being a believer yourself, I’m sure you would consider it a graceful and a pious act to present it to my little Tabernacle, where it would be properly valued. And it having been my mother’s property----’ “He got no further. I am not a woman to be trifled with, Mr. Hewitt, and I believe I beat him out of the garden with my basket. I was so infuriated I can scarcely remember what I did. The suggestion that I should sell my uncle Joseph’s snuff-box to a greengrocer was bad enough; the request that I should actually _give_ it to his ‘Tabernacle’ was infinitely worse. But to claim that it had belonged to his mother--well I don’t know how it strikes you, Mr. Hewitt, but to me it seemed the last insult possible.” [Illustration: “‘I AM NOT A WOMAN TO BE TRIFLED WITH.’”] “Shocking! shocking! of course,” Hewitt said, since she seemed to expect a reply. “And he called you an unbeliever, too. But what happened after that?” “After that he took care not to bother me personally again; but these wretched anonymous demands came in, with all sorts of darkly hinted threats as to the sin I was committing in keeping my own property. They didn’t trouble me much. I put ’em in the fire as fast as they came, until I began to find I was being watched and followed, and then I kept them.” “Very sensible,” Hewitt observed, “very sensible indeed to do that. But tell me as to these papers. Those you have here are nearly all in one handwriting, but some, as I have already said, are in another. Now before all this business did you ever see Reuben Penner’s handwriting?” “No, never.” “Then you are not by any means sure that he has written any of these things?” “But then who else could?” “That, of course, is a thing to be found out. At present, at any rate, we know this: that if Penner has anything to do with these letters he is not alone, because of the second handwriting. Also we must not bind ourselves past other conviction that he wrote any one of them. By the way, I am assuming that they all arrived by post?” “Yes, they did.” “But the envelopes are not here. Have you kept any of them?” “I hardly know; there may be some at home. Is it important?” “It may be; but those I can see at another time. Please go on.”