Note: "Originally published as 'The Fourth Poor Traveller' in 'The Seven Poor Travellers', a jointly-authored group of linked stories that formed the 1854 Extra Christmas Number of Household Words, published on 14 December 1854. The other contributors were Charles Dickens, G. A. Sola, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Elizabeth Lynn." — quoted from p 380 of Norman Page's collection of Wilkie Collins short fiction Mad Monkton and Other Stories.

Synopsis: "The narrator is a lawyer who contrives, in a series of ingenious moves, to steal back an incriminating letter from a blackmailer. The letter contains a confession to an attempted forgery by the dead father of a poor young governess, Miss Smith. The lawyer's success enables her marriage to a rich young man, Frank Gatliffe, to take place without the threat of scandal." -- Wilkie Collins Information Pages