Ruth reached her room, only remembering the pencil boxes when she dropped them from her muff upon her table. The solid sound they made--not rattling as pencils should--caused her to tear the pasted paper from about one box. She had bought not even pencils but only boxes packed with paper. Now she had the cover off and was staring at the contents. A new fifty dollar bank note was on top. Underneath that was another; below that, another--others. They made a packet enclosed in a strip such as banks use and this was denominated $1,000.00. There were twenty fifty-dollar notes in this packet. Ruth lifted it out; she rubbed her eyes and lifted out another packet labeled one thousand dollars made up of ten bills of one hundred dollars each; on the bottom were five one hundred dollar notes, not fastened together. The box held nothing else. Her pulses pounded and beat in her head; her hands touching the money went hot, went cold. This money was real; but her obtaining it must be a mistake. The box must have been the beggar’s bank which he had kept beside him; therefore his money had no meaning for her. But now the cripple’s insistence upon halting her, his keen observation of her, his slowness at last to make the sale, stirred swift instincts of doubt. She seized and tore open the other box which she had bought. No pencils in it; nor money. It held printed or engraved papers, folded and refolded tightly. One huge paper was on top, displaying bright red stamps and a ribbon and seals. This was an official government document; a passport to France! The picture of the holder was pasted upon a corner, stamped with the seal of the United States; and it was her picture! In strange clothes; but herself! For the instant, as things swam before her in her excitement, there came to Ruth the Cinderella wonder which a girl, who has been really a little child once, can never quite cease to believe--the wonder of a wish by magic made true. The pencils in the beggar’s boxes had been changed by her purchase of them to money for her and a passport to France. And for this magic, Gerry Hull was in some way responsible. She had appealed to him; he had spoken to her and thenceforth all things she touched turned to fairy gold--or better than gold; American bank notes and a passport to France!