You see it isn't dated.

He started to tear it up, but changed his mind, so now we've got to pass on it." She pushed the letter across the table to Harwood, and he read it through carefully.

He turned it over after the first reading, and the word "Declined," written firmly and underscored, held him long--so long that he started when Mrs.Owen roused him with "Well, Daniel ?" He knew before he had finished reading that it was he who had borne the letter to the cottage in Buckeye Lane, unless there had been a series of such communications, which was unlikely on the face of it.

Mrs.Owen had herself offered confirmation by placing the delivery of the dateless letter five years earlier.

The internal evidence in the phrases prescribing the manner in which the verbal reply was to be sent, and the indorsement on the back of the sheet, were additional corroboration.