“Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer,” says I. “But never mind that; I’m going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might possibly be the fingers which took it?” “That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand,” cried Mr. Frank. “How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?” “He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the audacity--” “Aha!” says I. “The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr. Davager.” “Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery,” Mr. Frank goes on, “he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that he had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview for days past. He then showed her--actually showed her--her unfortunate father’s letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me; bowed, and walked off; leaving her half dead with astonishment and terror. If I had only happened to be there at the time!” says Mr. Frank, shaking his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish. “It’s the greatest luck in the world that you were not,” says I. “Have you got that other letter?” He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this way: _“To Francis Gatliffe, Esq., Jun._ “SIR--I have an extremely curious autograph letter to sell. The price is a five-hundred-pound note. The young lady to whom you are to be married on Wednesday will inform you of the nature of the letter, and the genuineness of the autograph. If you refuse to deal, I shall send a copy to the local paper, and shall wait on your highly-respected father with the original curiosity, on the afternoon of Tuesday next. Having come down here on family business, I have put up at the family hotel--being to be heard of at the Gatliffe Arms. Your very obedient servant, ALFRED DAVAGER.” “A clever fellow that,” says I, putting the letter into my private drawer. “Clever!” cries Mr. Frank, “he ought to be horsewhipped within an inch of his life. I would have done it myself; but she made me promise, before she told me a word of the matter, to come straight to you.” “That was one of the wisest promises you ever made,” says I. “We can’t afford to bully this fellow, whatever else we may do with him. Do you think I am saying anything libelous against your excellent father’s character when I assert that if he saw the letter he would certainly insist on your marriage being put off, at the very least?”