Then she started back in alarm, and no wonder, for I burst out laughing, and ended by wringing the little woman’s hand with a force which brought tears to her eyes. ‘It’s all right!’ I exclaimed. ‘If that is your Godfrey Harleston, I can understand everything.—Hi!’—this was to a passing cab—‘Mansion House, my good fellow!—Now, jump in, Mrs Sam, and we will settle the business in no time.’ We rattled away. What a load was off my mind! How deep and cunning the trick, and yet how easy to understand, when once the clue was supplied! The man she identified as Godfrey Harleston was no other than Mr George Picknell, my friendly clerk, who had taken so much interest in me, and who had so constantly, although without any seeming intention, directed suspicion to the step-son of Mr Thurles; and if Sam had not been ‘shopped,’ or if Picknell had had the honesty to behave fairly to Sam’s wife, his scheme might have been successful—so far as he was concerned. We told our story at the Mansion House; and the case being one of importance, Mr Picknell was arrested that very afternoon, as he sat at his desk in the office. If he had not been taken then, we should not have had him at all, for he had a ticket in his pocket for his passage to the Cape, by a vessel sailing the next day. But before all these things had been done and found out, you may be sure I had hurried off home in a cab. I dashed up the steps, opened the door with my key, and then into the parlour, where Winny was sitting, half distracted with suspense and anxiety. But there must have been something in my face which told a tale, for before I had spoken a word, she rose, and with a laugh, which was a sob before it was finished, threw her arms round my neck and exclaimed: ‘My dear father! Thank heaven!’ She could say no more just then for sobbing and tears; but she knew somehow that all was well. We should have made a pretty picture, if any one could have seen us, for I was as bad as Winny; but we were both brimming over with happiness. Yet there was a great deal to be accounted for, which at another time would have checked anything like pleasure; but I had got over the worst; the most fatal difficulty had been mastered, and I did not care about anything else. Mr Godfrey—the real Godfrey—called upon me that afternoon, and much was explained then; while the examination in Picknell’s case supplied most of the rest. What was still obscure was cleared by Godfrey’s mother and by the confession of the unlucky young fellow who had forged the bills and was apprehended about this time. The poor creature was at death’s door, and never lived to take his trial.