feet and began a hurried search for the missing bonds. They could not
be far away. They must be in the room, and the room was so nearly empty
that it would take but a moment to penetrate every hiding-place. But
alas! the matter was not so simple as she thought. She looked here, she
looked there; in the bed, in the washstand drawer, under the cushions
of the only chair, even in the grate and up the chimney; but she found
nothing--nothing! She was standing stark and open-mouthed in the middle
of the floor, when the others entered, but recovered herself at sight
of their surprise, and, explaining what had happened, set them all to
search, sister, nephew, even the nurse, though she was careful to keep
close by the latter with a watchfulness that let no movement escape her.
But it was all fruitless. The bonds were not to be found, either in
that room or in any place near. They ransacked, they rummaged; they went
upstairs, they went down; they searched every likely and every unlikely
place of concealment, but without avail. They failed to come upon the
place where he had hidden them; nor did Miss Thankful or her sister ever
see them again from that day to this."

"Oh!" I exclaimed; "and the nephew? the nurse?"

"Both went away disappointed; he to face his disgrace about which his
aunts were very reticent, and she to seek work which was all the more
necessary to her, since she had lost her pay, with the disappearance of
these bonds, whose value I have no doubt she knew and calculated on."

"And the aunts, the two poor old creatures who stare all day out of
their upper window at these walls, still believe that money to be here,"
I cried.

"Yes, that is their mania. Several tenants have occupied these
premises--tenants who have not stayed long, but who certainly filled
all the rooms, and must have penetrated every secret spot the house
contains, but it has made no difference to them. They believe the bonds
to be still lying in some out-of-the-way place in these old walls, and
are jealous of any one who comes in here. This you can understand better
when I tell you that one feature of their mania is this: they have lost
all sense of time. It is two years since their brother died, yet to them
it is an affair of yesterday. They showed this when they talked to me.
What they wanted was for me to give up these bonds to them as soon as
I found them. They seemed to think that I might run across them in
settling, and made me promise