good-naturedly -- "catch! Perhaps I will make it up
to the ten shillings in a day or two -- if, thanks to these
letters, I am able to do a good stroke of business!"

Anna looked at him with fascinated eyes. The man
seemed made of money. He was always jingling
silver in his pocket. Gold was rather scarce just then
in Witanbury, but whenever Anna saw a half-
sovereign, she always managed somehow to get hold
of it. In fact she kept a store of silver and of paper
money for that purpose, for she knew that Mr. Head,
as he was now universally called, would give her threepence
over its face value if it was ten shillings, and
fivepence if it was a sovereign. She had already made
several shillings in this very easy way.

As she walked home, after having enjoyed a frugal
supper, she told herself that it was indeed unfortunate
that Major Guthrie was wounded and missing. Had
he still been with his regiment, he would certainly
have written to Mrs. Otway frequently. Anna, in
the past, had occasionally found long letters from him
torn up in the waste-paper basket, and she had also
seen, in the days that now seemed so long ago, letters
in the same hand lying about on Mrs. Otway's writing-
table.

[[209]]

p208 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p209w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p210

v?