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58 empty fire-place wherein he permitted it to burn to a crisp black ash.

When this was done, his smile broke through his clouding scowl.

"Well, my friend!" he apostrophized the author of that document which now could never prove incriminating—"at all events, I have you to thank for a new sensation. It has long been my ambition to feel warranted in lighting a cigarette with a twenty-pound note, if the whim should ever seize me!"

His smile faded slowly; the frown replaced it: something far more valuable to him than a hundred dollars had just gone up in smoke.…