Being unable to sleep for thinking of what he should do he was the first to reach the works in the morning. He lighted his furnace, and then went and unlocked the room where he worked as a handle maker, and also as a cutler. He entered briskly and opened the window. The gray light of the morning came in, and showed him something on the inside of the door that was not there when he locked it overnight. It was a very long knife, broad toward the handle, but keenly pointed, and double-edged. It was fast in the door, and impaled a letter addressed, in a vile hand--

Henry took hold of the handle to draw the knife out; but the formidable weapon had been driven clean through the door with a single blow.

Then Henry drew back, and, as the confusion of surprise cleared away, the whole thing began to grow on him, and reveal distinct and alarming features.

The knife was not one which the town manufactured in the way of business, it was a long, glittering blade, double-edged, finely pointed, and exquisitely tempered. It was not a tool, but a weapon.

Why was it there, and, above all, how did it come there?

He distinctly remembered locking the door overnight. Indeed, he had found it locked, and the window-shutters bolted; yet there was this deadly weapon, and on its point a letter, the superscription of which looked hostile and sinister.

He drew the note gently across the edge of the keen knife, and the paper parted like a cobweb. He took it to the window and read it. It ran thus:

"This knifs wun of too made ekspres t'other is for thy hart if thou doesnt harken Trade and leve Chetm. Is thy skin thicks dore thinks thou if not turn up and back to Lundon or I cum again and rip thy ---- carkiss with feloe blade to this thou ---- cokny