hand on the place where it ought to have been; but it wasn't there.

"I must have put it in the other side," I said to myself; and I opened
the other lid.

Then I turned cold, and ran my hand here and there, wild-like, to stop
at last with my mouth open, staring. The paper was gone! So was the
money, and every article of value that I had hoarded up.

For a few minutes I was too much stunned even to think; and when at last
I could get my brain to work, I sat there, feeling a poor, broken, weak
old man, and I covered my face with my hands and cried like a child.

"To think of it!" I groaned at length--"him so handsome and so young--
him whom I'd always felt so proud of--proud as if he'd been my own son.
Why, it would break his father's heart if he knew. It's that woman's
doing," I cried savagely. "She turned his head, or he'd never have done
such a cruel, base, bad act as to rob a poor old man like me." For I'd
recollected lending Mr Barclay my keys, and I felt that sooner than ask
his father for money, he had taken what he could find, and gone. "Let
him!" I said savagely at last. "But he needn't have stolen them. I'd
have given him everything I'd got. I'd have sold out the hundred pounds
I've got in the bank and lent him that. But he didn't know what he was
doing, poor boy. That woman has turned his brain."

"Ah, well!" I said at last bitterly, "it's my secret. Sir John shall
never know. He trusted me with one, and now his son--" I stopped short
there, for I recollected the paper, and fell all of a tremble, thinking
of that gold plate, and that some one else knew of its hiding-place now;
and I asked myself what I ought to do. For a long time I struggled; but
at last I felt that, much as I wanted to hide Mr Barclay's cruelly mean
act, I must not keep this thing a secret. "It's my duty to tell my
master," I said at last, "and I must." So I went up to where Sir John
was sitting alone, pretending to enjoy his wine, but looking very yellow
and old and sunken of face. "He's fretting about Master Barclay," I
said to myself, and I felt that I could not tell him that the lad had
taken my little treasures, but that he must know about the paper, so I
up and told him only this at once; and that's why he said I was an old
fool, and that it was all my fault.

"You old fool!" he cried excitedly, "what made you write such a paper?
It was like telling all the world."

"I thought it would be so shocking, Sir John