Burgess and substituting a copy of it
signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have
gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the
secret of its wording."
There was likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on;
everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were
scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order!
order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, and said:
"Let us not forget the proprieties due. There has evidently been a
mistake somewhere, but surely that is all. If Mr. Wilson gave me an
envelope--and I remember now that he did--I still have it."
He took one out of his pocket, opened it, glanced at it, looked surprised
and worried, and stood silent a few moments. Then he waved his hand in a
wandering and mechanical way, and made an effort or two to say something,
then gave it up, despondently. Several voices cried out:
"Read it! read it! What is it?"
So he began, in a dazed and sleep-walker fashion:
"'The remark which I made to the unhappy stranger was this: "You are far
from being a bad man. [The house gazed at him marvelling.
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