“It’s perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?” “I’m past it. Let us make a pallet here; we’ve got to stand watch till the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack... Oh dear, oh dear--if we hadn’t made the mistake!” The pallet was made, and Mary said: “The open sesame--what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark could have been. But come; we will get to bed now.” “And sleep?” “No; think.” “Yes; think.” By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their reconciliation, and were turning in--to think, to think, and toss, and fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark worth forty thousand dollars, cash. The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual that night was this: The foreman of Cox’s paper was the local representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary representative, for it wasn’t four times a year that he could furnish thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different. His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer: “Send the whole thing--all the details--twelve hundred words.” A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida; and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping some more news about the matter would come soon--right away. II.