Whitborough was a good-sized, bustling town, sending two members to parliament. In the heart of it lived Mr. Dale, the lawyer, who did a little in money-lending as well. He was a short stout man, with a red face and no whiskers, nearly bald on the top of his round head; and he usually attired himself in the attractive costume of a brown tail coat and white neckcloth.

On this same morning which had witnessed the departure of Sir Nash Bohun and his son from Dallory Hall, Mr. Dale, known commonly amongst his townsfolks as Lawyer Dale--was seated in his office at Whitborough. It was a small room, containing a sort of double desk, at which two people might face each other. The lawyer\'s seat was against the wall, his face to the room; a clerk sometimes sat, or stood on the other side when business was pressing. Adjoining this office was one for the clerks, three of whom were kept; and clients had to pass through their room to reach the lawyer\'s.

Mr. Dale was writing busily. The clock was on the stroke of twelve, and a great deal of the morning\'s work had still to be done, when one of the clerks came in: a tall, thin, cadaverous youth with black hair, parted into a flat curl on his forehead.

"Are you at home, sir?"

"Who is it?" asked Mr. Dale, growling at the interruption.

"Mr. Richard North."

"Send him in."

Richard came in; a fine looking man in his mourning clothes; the lawyer could not help thinking so. After shaking hands--a ceremony Mr. Dale liked to observe with all his clients, when agreeable to them--he came from behind his desk to seat himself in his elbow-chair of red leather, and gave Richard a seat opposite. The room was small, the desk and other furniture large, and they sat very close together. Richard held his hat on his knee.

"You guess, no doubt, what has brought me here, Mr. Dale. Now that my ill-fated brother is put out of our sight in his last resting-place, I have leisure and inclination to look into the miserable event that sent him there. I shall spare neither expense nor energy in discovering--if it may be--the traitor."

"You allude to the anonymous letter."

"Yes. And I have come to ask you to give me all the information you can about it."

"But, my good sir, I have no information to give. I don\'t possess any."

"I ought to have said details of the attendant circumstances. Let me hear your history of the transaction from beginning to end: and if you can give me any hint as to the writer--that is, if you have formed any private opinion about him--I trust you will do so."

Mr. Dale could be a little tricky on occasion; he was sometimes engaged in transactions that would not have borne the light of day, and that most certainly he would never have talked about. On the other hand, he could be honest and truthful where there existed no reason for being the contrary: and this anonymous letter business came under the latter category.

"The transaction was as open and straightforward as possible," spoke the lawyer--and Richard, a judge of character and countenances, saw he was speaking the truth. "Mr. Edmund North came to me one day some short time ago, wanting me to let him have a hundred pounds on his own security. I didn\'t care to do that--I knew about his bill transactions, you see--and I proposed that some one should join him. Eventually he came with Alexander the surgeon, and the matter was arranged."

"Do you know for what purpose he wanted the money?"

"For his young brother, Sidney North. A fast young man, that, Mr. Richard," added the lawyer in significant tones.

"Yes. Unfortunately."

"Well, he had got into some secret trouble, and came praying to Mr. Edmund to get him out of it. Whatever foolish ways Edmund North had wasted money in, there\'s this consolation remaining to his friends--that the transaction which eventually sent him to his grave was one of pure kindness," added the lawyer warmly. "\'My father has enough trouble,\' he remarked to me; \'with one thing and another, his life\'s almost worried out of him; and I don\'t care that he should hear what Master Sidney\'s been up to, if it can be kept from him.\' Yes; the motive was a good one."

"How was it he did not apply to me?" asked Richard.

"Well--had you not, just about that time, assisted your brother Edmund in some scrape of his own?"

Richard North nodded.

"Just so. He said he had not the face to apply to you so soon again; should be ashamed of himself. Well, to go on, Mr. Richard North. I gave him the money on the bill; and when it became due, neither he nor Alexander could meet it: so I agreed to renew it. Only one day after that, the anonymous letter found its way to Dallory Hall."

"You are sure of that?"

"Certain. The bill was renewed on the 30th of April; here, in this very room. Mr. North received the letter on the 1st of May."

"It was so. By the evening post."

"So that, if the transaction got wind through that renewing, the writer did not lose much time about it."

"Well now, Mr. Dale, in what way could that transaction have got wind, and who heard of it?"

"I never spoke of it to a human being," impetuously cried the lawyer. And Richard North again felt sure that he spoke the truth.

"The transaction, from the beginning, was known only to us three men: Edmund North, the surgeon, and myself. I don\'t believe either of them mentioned it at all. I know I did not. It\'s just possible Edmund North might have told his stepbrother Sidney how he got the money--the young scamp. I beg your pardon, Mr. Richard; I forgot he was your brother also."

"It would be to Sidney\'s interest to keep it quiet," remarked Richard. "Our men at the works have a report amongst them--I know not where picked up, and I don\'t think they know either--that the writer was your clerk, Wilks."

"Nonsense!" contemptuously rejoined the lawyer. "I\'ve heard the report also. Why should Wilks trouble his head about it? Don\'t believe anything so foolish."

"I don\'t believe it," returned Richard North. "Wilks could have no motive whatever for it, as far as I can see. But I think that he may have become cognizant of the affair, and talked of it abroad."

"Not one of my clerks knew anything about it," protested Mr. Dale. "I\'ve three of \'em: Wilks and two others. You don\'t suppose, sir, I take them into my confidence in all things."

"But, is it quite impossible that any one of them--say Wilks--could have found it out surreptitiously?" urged Richard.

"Wilks has nothing surreptitious about him," said the lawyer. "He is too shallow for it. A thoroughly useful clerk, but a man without guile."

"I did not mean to apply the word to him personally. I\'ll change it if you like. Could Wilks, or either of the other two, have accidentally learnt this, without your knowledge? Was there a possibility of it? Come, Mr. Dale; be open with me. Even if it were so, no blame would attach to you."

"It is just this," answered Mr. Dale: "I don\'t see how it was possible for any one of them to have learnt it; and yet at the same time, I see no other way in which it could have transpired. That\'s the candid truth. I lay awake one night for half-an-hour, turning the puzzle over in my mind. Alexander says he never opened his lips about it; I know I did not; and poor Edmund North went into his fatal passion thinking Alexander wrote the letter, because he said Alexander alone knew of it; a pretty sure proof he had not talked about it himself."

"Which brings us back to your clerks," remarked Richard North. "They might have overheard a few chance words when the bill was renewed."

"I\'m sure the door was shut," debated Mr. Dale, in a tone as if he were not sure, but rather sought to persuade himself that he was so. "Only Wilks was in, that morning; the other two had gone out."

"Rely upon it that\'s how it happened. The door could not have been quite closed."

"Well, I don\'t know. I generally shut it myself, and carefully too, when important clients are in here. I confess," honestly added Mr. Dale, "that it\'s the only explanation I can see in the matter. If the door was unlatched, Wilks might have heard. I had him in last night, and taxed him with it. He denies it out and out: says that, even if the affair had come to his knowledge, he knows his duty better than to have talked about it."

"I don\'t doubt that he does, when in his sober senses. But he is not always in them."

"Oh, come, Mr. Richard North, it is not as bad as that."

Richard was silent. If Mr. Dale was satisfied with his clerk and his clerk\'s discretion, he had no desire to render him otherwise.

"He takes too much now and then, you know, Mr. Dale; and he may have dropped a word in some enemy\'s hearing: who perhaps caught it up and then wrote the letter. Would you mind my questioning him?"

"He is not here to be questioned, or you might do it and welcome," replied Mr. Dale. "Wilks is lying up to-day. He has not been well for more than a week past; could hardly do his work yesterday."

"I\'ll take an opportunity of seeing him then," said Richard. "My father won\'t rest until the writer of this letter has been traced; neither, in truth, shall I."

The lawyer said good-morning to his visitor, and returned to his desk. But ere he recommenced work, he thought over the chief subject of their conversation. Had the traitor been Wilks, he asked himself. What Richard North had said was perfectly true--the young man sometimes took too much after work was over. But Mr. Dale had hitherto found no reason to complain of his discretion; and, difficult as it seemed to find any other loophole of suspicion, he finally concluded that he had no reason to do so now.

Meanwhile Richard North walked back to Dallory--it was nearly two miles from Whitborough. Passing his works, he continued his way a little further, to a turning called North Inlet, in which were some houses, large and small, chiefly tenanted by his workpeople. In one of these, a pretty cottage standing back, lodged Timothy Wilks. The landlady was a relative of Wilks\'s, and as he paid very little for his two rooms, he did not mind the walk once a-day to and from Whitborough.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Green. Is Timothy Wilks in?"

Mrs. Green, an ancient matron in a mob-cap, was on her knees, whitening the door-step. She rose at the salutation, saw it was Richard North, and curtsied.

"Tim have just crawled out to get a bit o\' sunshine, sir. He\'s very bad to-day. Would you please to walk in, Mr. Richard?"

Amidst this colony of his workpeople he was chiefly known as "Mr. Richard." Mrs. Green\'s husband was timekeeper at the North Works.

"What\'s the matter with him?" asked Richard, as he stepped over the threshold and the bucket to the little parlour.

"Well, sir, I only hope it\'s not low fever; but it looks to me uncommon like it."

"Since when has he been ill?"

"He have been ailing this fortnight past. The fact is, sir, he won\'t keep steady," she added in deploring tones. "Once a-week he\'s safe to come home the worse for drink, and that\'s pay night; and sometimes it\'s oftener than that. Then for two days afterwards he can\'t eat; and so it goes on, and he gets as weak as a rat. It\'s not that he takes much drink; it is that a little upsets him. Some men could take half-a-dozen glasses a\'most to his one."

"What a pity it is!" exclaimed Richard.

"He had a regular bout of it a week or so ago," resumed Mrs. Green; who once set off on the score of Timothy\'s misdoings, never knew when to stop. It was so well known to North Inlet, this failing of the young man\'s, that she might have talke............