naparte, was to be no longer schoolmaster, but
overseer of the farm. In return for his past scholastic labours he had
expressed himself willing to take possession of the dead man's goods
and room. Tant Sannie hardly liked the arrangement. She had a great
deal more respect for the German dead than the German living, and would
rather his goods had been allowed to descend peacefully to his son. For
she was a firm believer in the chinks in the world above, where not only
ears, but eyes might be applied to see how things went on in this world
below. She never felt sure how far the spirit-world might overlap this
world of sense, and, as a rule, prudently abstained from doing anything
which might offend unseen auditors. For this reason she abstained from
ill-using the dead Englishman's daughter and niece, and for this reason
she would rather the boy had had his father's goods. But it was hard to
refuse Bonaparte anything when she and he sat so happily together in the
evening drinking coffee, Bonaparte telling her in the broken Dutch he
was fast learning how he adored fat women, and what a splendid farmer he
was.

So at five o'clock on this afternoon Bonaparte knelt in the German's
room.

"Somewhere, here it is," he said, as he packed the old clothes carefully
out of the box, and, finding nothing, packed them in again. "Somewhere
in this room it is; and if it's here Bonaparte finds it," he repeated.
"You didn't stay here all these years without making a little pile
somewhere, my lamb. You weren't such a fool as you looked. Oh, no!" said
Bonaparte.

He now walked about the room, diving his fingers in everywhere: sticking
them into the great crevices in the wall and frightening out the
spiders; rapping them against the old plaster till it cracked and fell
in pieces; peering up the chimney, till the soot dropped on his bald
head and blackened it. He felt in little blue bags; he tried to raise
the hearth-stone; he shook each book, till the old leaves fell down in
showers on the floor.

It was getting dark, and Bonaparte stood with his finger on his nose
reflecting. Finally he walked to the door, behind which hung the
trousers and waistcoat the dead man had last worn. He had felt in them,
but hurriedly, just after the funeral the day before; he would examine
them again. Sticking his fingers into the waistcoat pockets, he found in
one corner a hole. Pressing his hand through it, between the lining and
the cloth, he presently cam