th our precious burden to Cambridge, and I
think that we might both of us have given away all the sleep we got that
night and not have been much the poorer. At daybreak Leo arrived in my
room in a dressing-gown, and suggested that we should at once proceed to
business. I scouted the idea as showing an unworthy curiosity. The chest
had waited twenty years, I said, so it could very well continue to wait
until after breakfast. Accordingly at nine--an unusually sharp nine--we
breakfasted; and so occupied was I with my own thoughts that I regret to
state that I put a piece of bacon into Leo's tea in mistake for a lump
of sugar. Job, too, to whom the contagion of excitement had, of course,
spread, managed to break the handle off my Sevres china tea-cup, the
identical one I believe that Marat had been drinking from just before he
was stabbed in his bath.

At last, however, breakfast was cleared away, and Job, at my request,
fetched the chest, and placed it upon the table in a somewhat gingerly
fashion, as though he mistrusted it. Then he prepared to leave the room.

"Stop a moment, Job," I said. "If Mr. Leo has no objection, I should
prefer to have an independent witness to this business, who can be
relied upon to hold his tongue unless he is asked to speak."

"Certainly, Uncle Horace," answered Leo; for I had brought him up to
call me uncle--though he varied the appellation somewhat disrespectfully
by calling me "old fellow," or even "my avuncular relative."

Job touched his head, not having a hat on.

"Lock the door, Job," I said, "and bring me my despatch-box."

He obeyed, and from the box I took the keys that poor Vincey, Leo's
father, had given me on the night of his death. There were three of
them; the largest a comparatively modern key, the second an exceedingly
ancient one, and the third entirely unlike anything of the sort that we
had ever seen before, being fashioned apparently from a strip of solid
silver, with a bar placed across to serve as a handle, and leaving
some nicks cut in the edge of the bar. It was more like a model of an
antediluvian railway key than anything else.

"Now are you both ready?" I said, as people do when they are going to
fire a mine. There was no answer, so I took the big key, rubbed some
salad oil into the wards, and after one or two bad shots, for my hands
were shaking, managed to fit it, and shoot the lock. Leo bent over and
caught the massive lid in both his hands, and with an eff