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 breakfast-plates, “let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it like, Jim?”

“Score one against culture,” said I. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Goodloe was looking at old Rundle’s document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate swear-word.

“Come here,” he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. “Look at that,” he said, laying his finger against it.

On the blue paper—a thing I had never noticed before—I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures: “Malvern, 1898.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“It’s the water-mark,” said Goodloe. “The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said I. “The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle.”

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his Rh