have made some
provisions by which we should get to know about them in the event of
his death without his having an opportunity of telling anyone where they
are.

"He might have been killed in battle; he might have been drowned on his
way home. He had thought the whole matter over so thoroughly, I do think
the possibilities of this could not have escaped him. As I told you,
Mr. Prendergast made inquiries of all the principal bankers and Indian
agents here, and altogether without success. After he had done that, I
got a list of all the leading firms in Calcutta and Madras, and wrote to
them, and all the replies were in the negative. It is true that does
not prove anything absolutely. Eighteen years is a long time, and the
chances are that during those years almost every head of a firm would
have retired and come home. Such a matter would only be likely to be
known to the heads; and if, as we thought likely, the box or chest was
merely forwarded by a firm there to England, the transaction would
not have attracted any special attention. If, upon the other hand, it
remained out there it might have been put down in a cellar or store, and
have been lying there ever since, altogether forgotten."

"I don't see myself why you should bother any more about it; perhaps,
as you say, it will turn up of itself when I come of age. At any rate, I
should say it is certainly as well to wait till then and see if it does,
especially as you acknowledge that you have no clew whatever to work
on. It is only three more years, for I am eighteen next week, and it
certainly seems to me that it will be very foolish to spend the next
three years in searching about for a thing that may come to you without
any searching at all."

"Well, I will think it over."

"You see, you really don't want the money, Mark," she went on.

"No, I don't want it particularly, Millicent; but when one knows that
there is something like 50,000 pounds waiting for one somewhere, one
would like to get it. Your father worked for twenty years of his life
accumulating it for us, and it seems to me a sort of sacred duty to see
that his labor has not all been thrown away."

Millicent was silent.

"It is very tiresome," she said presently. "Of course my father
intended, as you say, that his savings should come to us, but I am sure
he never meant that they should be a bother and a trouble to us."

"I don't see why they should ever be that, Millicent. As it is we have
both