E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) “‘Perhaps you can imagine how those letters puzzled me,’ he volunteered” THE GIRL AND THE BILL An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure By BANNISTER MERWIN ILLUSTRATED A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Published, March, 1909 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE The Threshold of Adventure Senhor Poritol The Shadows