bout her brother's recent
movements; and as the woman was obviously poor, we had best be stirring
on her behalf. So down we went, and in my mother's front parlour, the
same that Gilverthwaite had taken as his sitting-room, Mr. Lindsey
opened the heavy box for the second time, in Mrs. Hanson's presence, and
I began to make a list of its contents. At the sight of the money it
contained, the woman began to tremble.

"Eh, mister!" she exclaimed, almost tearfully, "but that's a sight of
money to be lying there, doing naught! I hope there'll be some way of
bringing it to me and mine--we could do with it, I promise you!"

"We'll do our best, ma'am," said Mr. Lindsey. "As you're next of kin
there oughtn't to be much difficulty, and I'll hurry matters up for you
as quickly as possible. What I want this morning is for you to see all
there is in this chest; he seems to have had no other belongings than
this and his clothes--here at Mrs. Moneylaws', at any rate. And as you
see, beyond the money, there's little else in the chest but cigars, and
box after box of curiosities that he's evidently picked up in his
travels--coins, shells, ornaments, all sorts of queer things--some of 'em
no doubt of value. But no papers--no letters--no documents of any sort."

A notion suddenly occurred to me.

"Mr. Lindsey," said I, "you never turned out the contents of any of
these smaller boxes the other night. There might be papers in one or
other of them."

"Good notion, Hugh, my lad!" he exclaimed. "True--there might. Here goes,
then--we'll look through them systematically."

In addition to the half-dozen boxes full of prime Havana cigars, which
lay at the top of the chest, there were quite a dozen of similar boxes,
emptied of cigars and literally packed full of the curiosities of which
Mr. Lindsey had just spoken. He had turned out, and carefully replaced,
the contents of three or four of these, when, at the bottom of one,
filled with old coins, which, he said, were Mexican and Peruvian, and
probably of great interest to collectors, he came across a paper, folded
and endorsed in bold letters. And he let out an exclamation as he took
this paper out and pointed us to the endorsement.

"Do you see that?" said he. "It's the man's will!"

The endorsement was plain enough--My will: _James Gilverthwaite_. And
beneath it was a date, 27-8-1904.

There was a dead silence amongst the four of us--my mother had been with
us all the time--as Mr. Lindse