ding what was the matter?

Was the house on fire? . . . No: outside the half-open window lay spread
the moonlight, pale and tranquil. The night wind entering, scarcely
stirred the thin dimity curtains. This was no weather for sudden
hail-storms or for shipwreck. Cai flung back the bedclothes, jumped
out--and uttered a sharp cry of pain. His naked foot had trodden on a
gritty pebble, small but sharp.

Someone had flung a handful of gravel at the window.

He picked his way cautiously across the floor, and looked out. . . .
In the moonlit roadway, right beneath, a girl--Fancy Tabb--was dancing a
fandango, the while in her lifted hand she waved a white parcel.

"Ah, there you be!" she hailed, catching sight of him. "I've found
'em!"

"Found what?"

"Your papers! . . . I couldn' sleep till I told you: and I had to fetch
Mr Benny along--here he is!"

"Good evening, Captain," spoke up Mr Peter Benny, stepping out into the
roadway from the doorway where he had been explaining to 'Bias.
"It's all right, sir. Your papers are found."

"Good evening, Benny! Tis kind of you, surely,"--Cai's voice trembled a
little. "What's the hour?" he asked.

"Scarce midnight yet. I reckoned maybe you might be sittin' up,
frettin' over this--'Twas the child here, though, that found it out and
insisted on bringing me."

"After we'd locked up," broke in Fancy, "and just as I was packin' Dad
off to bed, it came into my head to ask him--'I suppose you don't know,'
said I, 'of anyone's havin' been to master's safe without my bein'
told?' He thought a bit, and 'No,' says he; 'nobody 'cept myself, an'
that but once. '_You?_' says I, 'and whoever sent _you_ there?'
'Why, the master hisself,' says Dad.--Who else?' 'But what for?' I
asks, feelin' as you might have knocked me down with a feather.
'I meant to ha' told you,' says Dad, 'but it slipped my mind. 'Twas one
afternoon, when you was out on your walk. I heard Master's stick tap on
the plankin' overhead so I went up, thinkin' as he might be wantin' his
tea in a hurry. He told me to open the safe an' take out a packet o'
papers from the top shelf; which I did.' 'What papers?' said I
'How should I know?' says Dad: 'I don't meddle with his business--I've
seen too much of it in _my_ life. I didn' even glance at 'em, but
locked the safe again, an' put 'em where he told me--which was in the
japanned box by his chair!' 'Why,' says I,' that's his Insurance Box as
he called it--th