So he drew a sheet of paper toward him, and wrote his letter to Hugh Robertson. It was much shorter and more restrained than the former one, for no one could fail to recognize in this man a person quite able to stand on his own feet, and yet Mr. Black felt conscious of a regret in this instance, too. A man so strongly capable of renouncing seemed to him the very man who deserved to possess. Before he had quite finished, he was interrupted by a pressing business demand, so he thrust both the finished and unfinished letters into the drawer of his desk, together with the letters to which they were the answers. Before he left the room, he called one of his assistants and delivered to him the two manuscripts, to be put up for return, and giving the addresses, told the clerk to send on the manuscripts, and he would forward, later in the day, his letters to the two authors. He hurried away from the room then, and the clerk took the two manuscripts into the outer office, put them up with great precision and care, and in all unconsciousness sent Hugh Robertson’s manuscript to Ethel Ross, and Ethel Ross’s manuscript to Hugh Robertson. He had understood Mr. Black’s very explicit directions, but, in putting up and sealing the two parcels, he had mixed them. So it came to pass that when Miss Ethel Ross--whose real name, in full, was Ethel Ross Duncan--went on her daily mission to the little postoffice of the small country town, she received one day, not the envelope containing a check, for which she so mightily longed, but a bulky package, which made her very young and ardent heart sink low within her. She really had not expected to have her story returned. It had seemed to her, as she had written it with breathless agitation, in stolen moments, alone in her chamber at night, so palpitatingly interesting, that, as she had ended it, she had felt a positive certainty of seeing those thrilling words turned into print, and of having, in exchange for it, a check which should be large enough for her to carry out a passionate desire of her heart. It was with difficulty that she could repress her tears as she took the package, which had suddenly become so stale and poor and worthless a thing, and walked homeward with it.