"I've come about that letter, Mr. Chandler," began the visitor; "my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received." "I assure you no such letter was received by us----" "It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it," irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted. "Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us," said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other's irritability. "Then where is the letter? What became of it?" "I should say perhaps it was never posted," mildly suggested Tom. "Not posted!" tartly echoed Mr. Preen. "Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly." "It never was delivered to us," said Tom, shaking his head. "If---- oh, here is Mr. Paul." The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss?--or an invented one? But old Paul read people's characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story. "Let me see," said he. "You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night's post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon--Wednesday, the sixteenth." "Yes," assented Mr. Preen. "Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk." "Oh, she did, did she?" cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. "Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I'm not an old woman. We don't get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any," he went on. "Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?" "I daresay I shall be able to do so," replied Tom. "Wednesday, the sixteenth.--Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp's?" "What on earth has the picnic to do with it?" sharply demanded Mr. Preen. "All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity."