quite an impossibility. I went
back there"--pointing to a bureau of drawers behind him--"and put the
paper hastily in, and locked it in, returning the keys to my pocket. The
man had not stepped over the threshold of the door then; he was a little
taken to, I fancy, at his having burst the door, and he stood there
staring."

"Could he have got at it afterwards?" asked Jan.

"It is, I say, an impossibility. He never was within a yard or two of
the bureau; and, if he had been, the place was firmly locked. That man
it certainly was not. Nobody has been in the room since, save myself,
and you for a few minutes to-day when I called you in. And yet the paper
is gone!"

"Could anybody have come into the room by the other door?" asked Jan.

"No. It opens with a latch-key only, as this does, and the key was safe
in my pocket."

"Well, this beats everything," cried Jan. "It's like the codicil at
Verner's Pride."

"The very thing it put me in mind of," said Dr. West. "I'd rather--I'd
rather have lost that codicil, had it been mine, than lose this, Mr.
Jan."

Jan opened his eyes. Jan had a knack of opening his eyes when anything
surprised him--tolerably wide, too, "What paper was it, then?" he cried.

"It was a prescription, Mr. Jan."

"A prescription!" returned Jan, the answer not lessening his wonder.
"That's not much. Isn't it in the book?"

"No, it is not in the book," said Dr. West. "It was too valuable to be
in the book. You may look, Mr. Jan, but I mean what I say. This was a
private prescription of inestimable value--a secret prescription, I may
say. I would not have lost it for the whole world."

The doctor wiped the dew from his perplexed forehead, and strove, though
unsuccessfully, to control his agitated voice to calmness. Jan could
only stare. All this fuss about a prescription!

"Did it contain the secret for compounding Life's Elixir?" asked he.

"It contained what was more to me than that," said Dr. West. "But you
can't help me, Mr. Jan. I would rather be left to the search alone."

"I hope you'll find it yet," returned Jan, taking the hint and
retreating to the surgery. "You must have overlooked it amongst some of
these papers."

"I hope I shall," replied the doctor.

And he shut himself up to the search, and turned over the papers. But he
never found what he had lost, although he was still turning and turning
them at morning light.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MISS DEBORAH'S ASTONISHMENT.

On