"It's really a pretty fair front you're putting up," he commented with a dry indulgent smile. "But might as well drop it, for you see I'm on. But I think I understand." He nodded. "You don't want to admit anything until you feel you can trust me. That's about the size of it, isn't it, friends?" Mrs. De Peyster stared, without speaking. "Now I know I can trust you," he went on easily, "for I've got something on you and I give you away if you give me away. Well, sisters, of course you know you're not the only people the police are after. That's why I am temporarily in the ministry." He grinned widely--a grin of huge enjoyment. "Who are you?" demanded Mrs. De Peyster. "Well, you don't hesitate to ask, do you?" He laughed, lightly. "Say, it's too good to keep! I always was too confiding a lad; but I've got you where you won't squeal, and I suppose we've got to know each other if we're going to do business together. You must know, my dear ladies, that every proposition I've handled I've gone into it as much for the fun as for the coin." He cocked his head; plainly there was an element of conceit in his character. "Well, fair ones--ready?" Mrs. De Peyster nodded. "Ever heard of the American Historical Society's collection of recently discovered letters of a gentleman named Thomas Jefferson?" Mrs. De Peyster started. "Yes." "And perhaps you have heard that authorities now agree that said Thomas Jefferson was dead almost a hundred years when said letters were penned; and that he must have been favored with the assistance of an amanuensis of, so to say, the present generation?" "Yes." "That being the case you may have heard of one Thomas Preston, alleged to be said amanuensis?" "Yes." He put his hand across his clerical vest, and bowed first to Mrs. De Peyster, then to Matilda. "It gives Mr. Preston very great pleasure to meet you, ladies. Only for the present he humbly petitions to be known as Mr. Pyecroft." Mrs. De Peyster was quite unable to speak. So this was the man Judge Harvey was trying to hunt down! Her meeting him like this, it seemed an impossible coincidence--utterly impossible! She little dreamed that the laws of chance were not at all concerned in this adventure; that this meeting was but the natural outcome of Matilda's trifling act in picking up from the library rug a boarding-house card and slipping it into her slit-pocket. The young man, for he now obviously was a young man, plainly delighted in the surprise he had created.