ggins's knock, and Higgins himself, being a little hard of hearing,
took for granted the command to enter. The earl hastily thrust the
book under the pillow, alongside the revolvers, and rated Higgins in a
most cruel way for entering the room before getting permission to do
so. He had never seen the earl so angry before, and he laid it all to
this book. It was after the book had come that the forge had been
erected and the anvil bought. Higgins never saw the book again, but
one morning, six months before the earl died, Higgins, in raking out
the cinders of the forge, found what he supposed was a portion of the
book's cover. He believed his master had burnt the volume.

Having dismissed Higgins, I said to the earl,--

'The first thing to be done is to enclose this bill to Denny and Co.,
booksellers, Strand. Tell them you have lost the volume, and ask them
to send another. There is likely someone in the shop who can decipher
the illegible writing. I am certain the book will give us a clue. Now,
I shall write to Braun and Sons, Budge Row. This is evidently a French
company; in fact, the name as connected with paper-making runs in my
mind, although I cannot at this moment place it. I shall ask them the
use of this paper that they furnished to the late earl.'

This was done accordingly, and now, as we thought, until the answers
came, we were two men out of work. Yet the next morning, I am pleased
to say, and I have always rather plumed myself on the fact, I solved
the mystery before replies were received from London. Of course, both
the book and the answer of the paper agents, by putting two and two
together, would have given us the key.

After breakfast, I strolled somewhat aimlessly into the library, whose
floor was now strewn merely with brown wrapping paper, bits of string,
and all that. As I shuffled among this with my feet, as if tossing
aside dead autumn leaves in a forest path, my attention was suddenly
drawn to several squares of paper, unwrinkled, and never used for
wrapping. These sheets seemed to me strangely familiar. I picked one
of them up, and at once the significance of the name Braun and Sons
occurred to me. They are paper makers in France, who produce a smooth,
very tough sheet, which, dear as it is, proves infinitely cheap
compared with the fine vellum it deposed in a certain branch of
industry. In Paris, years before, these sheets had given me the
knowledge of how a gang of thieves disposed of their g