CHAPTER XXXIII 482
" It is a large sum-- don ' t you think there is a mistake?"
" No mistake at all." " Perhaps you have read the figures wrong-- it may be two thousand!" " It is written in letters, not figures,-- twenty thousand."
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
" If it were not such a very wild night," he said, " I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e ' en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night."
He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. " Stop one minute!" I cried.
" Well?"
" It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery."
" Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; " and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled.
" No; that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
" It is a very strange piece of business," I added; " I must know more about it."