'
`I wonder what was in the letter!' I asked. `Did your father never
know who sent it?'
`Ah,' my greybeard rejoined, `that's the most curious thing. And it's
a secret. I can't tell you.'
He was not as good as his word. I bribed him delicately with the
purchase of more than one old book. Also, I think, he was flattered by
my eager curiosity to learn his long-pent secret. He told me that the
letter was brought to the house by one of the footmen of Sir James
Tylney Long, and that his father himself delivered it into the hands
of Mr. Coates.
`When he had read it through, the poor gentleman tore it into many
fragments, and stood staring before him, pale as a ghost. "I must not
stay another hour in Bath," he said. When he was gone, my father (God
forgive him!) gathered up all the scraps of the letter, and for a long
time he tried to piece them together. But there were a great many of
them, and my father was not a scholar, though he was affluent.'
`What became of the scraps?' I asked. `Did your father keep them?'
`Yes, he did. And I used to try, when I was younger, to make out
something from them. But even I never seemed to get near it. I've
never thrown them away, though. They're in a box.'
I got them for a piece of gold that I could ill spare--some score or
so of shreds of yellow paper, traversed with pale ink.
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