xiously. "But tell me--
how--what you have done. I would not speak to anybody, and kept it all
so quiet till you came, uncle, because of that. You--you haven't put it
in the hands of the police?"

"How could I, my boy, when I knew nothing of the robbery until you told
me this morning?"

"But you said you had punished him, uncle."

"So I have--cruelly."

"I don't understand you," said Tom, with his brow puckered-up, and some
of the old ideas about his uncle's sanity creeping back into his mind.

"I suppose not, Tom; but I have punished your cousin all the same--
unconsciously of course."

"I wish you'd tell me what you mean, uncle," said Tom, with his face one
mass of puckers and wrinkles.

"I will, Tom. No; I would never be the man to bring the law to bear on
my own brother or nephew, though on your account I should have taken
pretty stern measures to enforce restitution of any papers that had been
stolen; but I have, without knowing it, allowed your cousin alone, or
perhaps incited, to come down here in my absence, and cunningly attempt
to get those deeds back into his or his father's possession."

"Oh, uncle! you don't think--"

"Silence. I don't want to think or surmise, Tom. I only want for you
and me to be left alone to our own devices, and you keep interrupting me
when I want to explain."

Tom made a deprecating gesture.

"Unconsciously, I say, I have punished your cousin, for he came down
here and stole some worthless papers."

"No, uncle," said Tom sadly; "the deeds are gone."

"Yes, my boy," said Uncle Richard; "on second thoughts I felt that it
was my duty to place them in a safe depository, and I took them up to
London when I went, and saw them locked up in the deed-box with my other
valuable papers, and then placed in the strong-room at my lawyer's,
where they are out of every would-be scoundrel's reach."

"Uncle!" cried Tom excitedly.

"Well, Tom?"

"I am glad."

"That the papers are safe?"

"Bother the old papers!" cried Tom; "that you have punished him like
that."

Then the lad burst into a fit of peculiar laughter, and became calm the
moment after.

"Come on, uncle," he cried; "I want to show you the three plane mirrors
that I've ground."

"Beauties, Tom," said Uncle Richard a few minutes later. "Tom, my lad,
you're my dear sister's son, and the queerest boy I ever met."

"Am I, uncle?" said Tom dryly.

"Yes, my lad."

"You don't mind?"

"Not a bit, Tom. I'm gl