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236 'But I confess I don't think it was worth waking me up for. I could stake my life on that little woman's integrity.'

We did inquire next morning—with this curious result: it turned out that, though the Quackenbosses had left the Lakeside Hotel on Tuesday, it was only for the neighbouring Washington House, which they quitted on Wednesday morning, taking the same train for Saratoga which Charles and I had intended to go by. Mrs. Quackenboss carried a small brown paper parcel in her hands—in which, under the circumstances, we had little difficulty in recognising Charles's dispatch-box, loosely enveloped.

Then I knew how it was done. The chambermaid, loitering about the room for a tip, was—Mrs. Quackenboss! It needed but an apron to transform her pretty travelling-dress into a chambermaid's costume; and in any of those huge American hotels one chambermaid more or less would pass in the crowd without fear of challenge.

'We will follow them on to Saratoga,' Charles cried. 'Pay the bill at once, Seymour.'

'Certainly,' I answered. 'Will you give me some money?'

Charles clapped his hand to his pockets. 'All, all in the dispatch-box,' he murmured.

That tied us up another day, till we could get some ready cash from our agents in New York; for the manager, already most suspicious at the change of name and the accusation of theft, peremptorily