etched
from their dusty graves to fumble once more for their old title deeds;
at night, when it was lit up by flaring gaslight, the hollow mockery
of this dissipation was so apparent that people in the streets, looking
through the illuminated windows, felt as if the privacy of a family
vault had been intruded upon by body-snatchers.

Royal Thatcher glanced around the room, took in all its dreary
suggestions in a half-weary, half-indifferent sort of way, and dropped
into the lawyer's own revolving chair as that gentleman entered from the
adjacent room.

"Well, you got back soon, I see," said Harlowe briskly.

"Yes," said his client, without looking up, and with this notable
distinction between himself and all other previous clients, that he
seemed absolutely less interested than the lawyer. "Yes, I'm here; and,
upon my soul, I don't exactly know why."

"You told me of certain papers you had discovered," said the lawyer
suggestively.

"Oh, yes," returned Thatcher with a slight yawn. "I've got here
some papers somewhere;"--he began to feel in his coat pocket
languidly;--"but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken
sort of place! Let's go up to Welker's, and you can look at them over a
bottle of champagne."

"After I've looked at them, I've something to show you, myself," said
Harlowe; "and as for the champagne, we'll have that in the other room,
by and by. At present I want to have my head clear, and yours too,--if
you'll oblige me by becoming sufficiently interested in your own affairs
to talk to me about them."

Thatcher was gazing abstractedly at the fire. He started. "I dare say,"
he began, "I'm not very interesting; yet it's possible that my affairs
have taken up a little too much of my time. However,--" he stopped, took
from his pocket an envelope, and threw it on the desk,--"there are
some papers. I don't know what value they may be; that is for you
to determine. I don't know that I've any legal right to their
possession,--that is for you to say, too. They came to me in a queer
way. On the overland journey here I lost my bag, containing my few traps
and some letters and papers 'of no value,' as the advertisements say,
'to any but the owner.' Well, the bag was lost, but the stage driver
declares that it was stolen by a fellow-passenger,--a man by the name of
Giles, or Stiles, or Piles--"

"Wiles," said Harlowe earnestly.

"Yes," continued Thatcher, suppressing a yawn; "yes, I guess you're
r