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 words came over the wire as you have written them, Mr. Barker?"

"Just as sure as mortal man can be, I took them down myself. Not that I'm any Pope of Rome, Mr. Bigg, and above mistakes."

"No, that you bain't, Barker," said Reubens; "no more ain't we all. So long as the world is, so long will some of us go queer in the head when the weather's hot. Let's hope as there won't be no mistakes when our books is balanced upstairs. It 'ud be hard on a man to find himself in hell for the want of a bit of good summing."

"That's true," said the postmaster, and he said it very solemnly. "But I'll trust in the Lord's books, Mr. Reubens."

I listened to the two fools wrangling together for some minutes, and then it occurred to me that I ought to get back to the house again. I'd stopped long enough to put my foot into it pretty badly, and long enough to know that nothing but a miracle could marry Sir Nicolas Steele to Janet Oakley. It was bad enough when Heresford received the first telegram; but I saw—and I could have bitten my hand because I'd done it—that I had put him in the way of getting the second message, which must tell him as plain as a book what the matter meant. "Like enough," said I, "he'll be over here with the post to-morrow, and then where shall we be?" Upon my word, it was the crudest bit of business that I'd met with in the ten years I'd been man to Sir Nicolas Steele.