that packet you put in the coffin had anything to do with it?'

'Good Lord, bless your soul, sir, no,' I said. 'That was no will or
lawyer's letters, it was but some little token of remembrance he set
store by.'

'Thanks, Nelly, that was all I wanted to know.'

No one ever knows who tells these things, but it had leaked out
somehow that that slice of the estate was to belong to young Robert
the gamekeeper, and you may be sure the tongues went wagging above a
bit. But it seemed to me, if it was so, my master was right to make
a proper provision for Robert as well as for Jasper. However, nobody
could be sure of anything until after the funeral.

The doctor was staying in the house, and master's younger brother,
besides the lawyer and young Master Jasper; so I had many things to
see to, and ought to have been tired enough to get to sleep easy the
night before he was buried. But somehow I couldn't sleep. I couldn't
help thinking of my master as I had known him all these years. Him
being always so gentle and so kind, and so light-hearted, it didn't
seem likely he could have had young Robert on his conscience all the
time; and yet what was I to think? And then my poor Jasper--I say
'poor,' but I never loved and pitied him less than I did that night.
He had lost such a father, and he could go troubling about whether
he had got the whole estate or not. So I lay awake, and I thought of
the coffin lying between its burning tapers in the great bedroom,
and I wished they had not screwed him down, for then I could have
gone, late as it was, and had another look at my master's face. And
as I lay it seemed to me that I heard a door opened, and then a
step, and then a key turned. Now, the master never locked his door,
so the key of that room turned rusty in the lock, and before I had
time to think more than that I was out of bed and in my
dressing-gown, creeping along the passage. Sure enough, my master's
door was open, as I saw by the streak of light across the corridor.
I walked softly on my bare feet, and no one could have heard me go
along the thick carpet. When I got to the door, I saw that what I
had been trying not to think of was really true. Master Jasper was
there taking the screws out of his father's coffin to see what was
in that green leather case.

I stood there and looked. I could not have moved, not for the
Queen's crown, if it had been offered me then and there. One after
another he took the screws out and laid t