hem on the little bedside
table, where the master used to keep his pistols of a night. When
all the screws was out he lifted the lid in both his arms and set it
on the bed, where it lay looking like another coffin. Then he began
to search for what I had put in beside his father.

Now, I may be a heartless woman, and I suppose I am, or how account
for it? But when I saw my young master go to his father's coffin
like that, and begin to serve his own interest and his own
curiosity, every spark of love I had ever had for the boy died out,
and I cared no more for him than if he had been the first comer.

If he had kissed his father, or so much as looked kindly at the dead
face in the coffin, it would have been different. But he hadn't a
look or a thought to spare for him as gave him life, and had
humoured and spoiled and petted and made much of him all his twenty
years. Not a thought for his father; all his thoughts was to find
out what his father hadn't wished him to know.

Now I was feeling set that Master Jasper should never know what was
in that green leather case, and I cared no more for what he thought
or what he felt than I should have done if he had been a common
thief as, God forgive me, he was in my eyes at that hour. So I crept
behind him softly, softly, an inch at a time, till I got to where I
could see the coffin; and if you'll believe a foolish old woman, I
kept looking at that dead face till I nigh forgot what I was there
for. And while I was standing mazed like and stupid, young Master
Jasper had got out the green case, and was turning over what was in
it in his hands.

I got him by the two elbows behind, and he started like a horse that
has never felt even the whip will do at the spur's touch. Almost at
the same time my heart came leaping into my mouth, and if ever a
woman nearly died of fright, I was that woman, for some one behind
me put a hand on my shoulder and said, 'What's all this?'

Young Sir Jasper and I both turned sharp. It was the doctor. His
ears were as quick as mine, and he had heard the key too, I suppose.
Anyhow, there he was, and he picked up the papers young Sir Jasper
had let fall, and says he, 'I will deal with these, young gentleman.
Go you to your room.' And Sir Jasper, like a kicked hound, went.
Then I began to tell my share in that night's work. But the doctor
stopped me, for he had seen me and watched me all along. Then he
stood by the coffin, and went through what was in the