did not want it for anything else) and had bought him
several quires of cartridge-paper; and Dr. Brown had given him a packet
of medicine-labels to cut up into strips to fasten his specimens in
with, and the collection looked very well and very scientific; and all
that remained was to find a good place to put it away in. The drawers of
the press were of all shapes and sizes, but there were two longish very
shallow ones that just matched each other, and when I pulled one of them
out, and put the fern-papers in, they fitted exactly, and the drawer
just held half the collection. I called Charlie to look, and he hobbled
up on his crutches and was delighted, but he said he should like to put
the others in himself, so I got him into a chair, and shut up the full
drawer and pulled out the empty one, and went down-stairs for the two
moleskins we were curing, and the glue-pot, and the toffy-tin, and some
other things that had to be cleared out of the school-room now the
holidays were over.

When I came back the fern-papers were still outside, and Charlie was
looking flushed and cross.

"I don't know how you managed," he said, "but I can't get them in. This
drawer must be shorter than the other; it doesn't go nearly so far
back."

"Oh yes, it does, Charlie!" I insisted, for I felt as certain as people
always do feel about little details of that kind. "The drawers are
exactly alike; you can't have got the fern-sheets quite flush with each
other," and I began to arrange the trayful of things I had brought
up-stairs in the bottom of the cupboard.

"I _know_ it's the drawer," I heard Charlie say. ("He's as obstinate as
possible," thought I.)

Then I heard him banging at the wood with his fists and his crutch. ("He
_is_ in a temper!" was my mental comment.) After this my attention was
distracted for a second or two by seeing what I thought was a bit of
toffy left in the tin, and biting it and finding it was a piece of
sheet-glue. I had not spit out all the disgust of it, when Charlie
called me in low, awe-struck tones: "Jack! come here. Quick!"

I ran to him. The drawer was open, but it seemed to have another drawer
inside it, a long, narrow, shallow one.

"I hit the back, and this sprang out," said Charlie. "It's a secret
drawer--and look!"

I did look. The secret drawer was closely packed with rolls of thin
leaflets, which we were old enough to recognize as bank-notes, and with
little bags of wash-leather; and when Charli