as a rock, and yet the crisp paper rustled noisily.

Mr. Brown's bank-notes had been a fruitful source of emotion that day already, and, in Bommaney's mind at least, had raised very dreadful doubts and perplexities. There were doubts and perplexities in the mind of young Mr. Barter, but they were altogether of another order. Young Mr. Barter was perfectly aware that he was being tempted, and felt that, in its way, the temptation wets a kind of godsend. He even said as much in a low murmur to himself. His perplexities related to other things than the fear of any fall from honour. Bommaney had evidently been very queer. Bommaney had been horribly cut up about something, even before he heard the news the young solicitor had to give him. But was he so disturbed as to be likely to forget where he had last secured so considerable a sum of money? This mental inquiry naturally set young Mr. Barter to work to discover how considerable the sum of money actually was. He laid the notes upon the table, and tried to wet his thumb upon his lips. There was no moisture there, and his mouth was as dry as touchwood. He drank a little water, and then began to count the notes. He made them eighty-one at first; and then, recounting, made them seventy-nine. Counting them a third time, he made them eighty.

'Damn it all!' said young Mr. Barter, 'can't I count? I suppose the old buffer will come back for them.' He tried a fourth time, and confirmed his third counting. 'They'll get stopped at the Bank,' he said. 'They'll be no use to anybody.' He sat for a while thinking, with his eyes half-closed, drumming out a tune upon the table with the tips of his fat white fingers, then he folded the notes with great precision and delicacy, put them into his pocket, found his hat, overcoat, and walking-stick, and made ready for the streets. In the quiet of these legal chambers many chance noises from without had from time to time been clearly audible. He heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement of the quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the heart, he moved swiftly to put out the light, and listened. The step stumbled at the entrance to the staircase, at the foot of which the outer door stood closed. Young Mr. Barter's heart beat, if possible, faster than before; and the veins in his head so throbbed, that only the confining rim of his hat seemed to keep his head itself from bursting. There came an eager summons at the door, an imperative rapping with the head of a stout walking-stick. He set his teeth, and, drawing back his lips with a horrible smile in the dark, breathed noiselessly. The rapping grew more and more imperative and urgent, and then came a preternatural silence, with an undercurrent of distant sound in it, and the sudden blare of a cornet in the street, which sounded to his nerves like the trumpet of the herald of the day of judgment He heard the hurrying feet plunge down the steps again, and cross the quadrangle, and listened until their sound merged into the dull noises of the London night. He stood in the dark after this for what seemed a long time, learning that his features twitched, and teaching himself to control them. Then he left his chambers with great secrecy, and broke into a cold sweat to think, as he stood half through the doorway, how narrowly he had escaped from slamming the door behind him. This was an act which might have been suicidal in its stupidity; for to give any sign of his presence there after that thundering summons at the door would have been to betray himself beyond redemption. He inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching to escape imagined observers, drew the door gently after him, and turned the key slowly in the lock. As he did this he heard a footstep and a cough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a pale and slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws with apologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startled meekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backward glance and a second cough of apology, and so disappeared.

Young Mr. Barter, with his nerves already shaken by this small episode, walked into the main thoroughfare and merged with the crowd, bearing Mr. Bommaney's eight thousand pounds with him. When he had walked for a while he hailed a cab, and was driven home. He had, or prided himself on having, an exceptional eye for horseflesh, but it was not his faculty in this direction which had led him to choose a cab horsed by a brute of unusual symmetry and swiftness. This was an accident, but, like other accidents in this perplexed world, it served its purpose. It landed him at the paternal door in Harley Street almost at the instant at which Bommaney arrived there in pursuit of him.

Now, although young Mr. Barter had not calculated on meeting Bommaney so soon, and although the meeting was naturally something of a shock to him, he had already schooled himself for interview and inquiry. He went a little paler than common as he grasped his father's old friend by the hand for the third time that evening, and trembled ever so little as he spoke.

'I half expected to find you here,' he said. 'I could see how moved you were by the news of my father's illness.' The door stood open, and the old-fashioned man-servant within had been in the act of closing it upon Bommaney's retreating figure when cab number two had driven up, and the young master of the house had alighted from it. 'Is the news worse or better?' He laid both hands upon Bommaney's arms as he put this question.

The elderly servitor, who had never had reason given to him to believe that young Mr. Barter was above the reasonable attached to his father, was a little surprised to see the young man so moved. He drew the door gently after him, and came out upon the steps.

'I'm afraid, Mr. John,' he murmured sympathetically, 'that it's practically all over, sir. The poor gentleman's quite unconscious, and the doctor don't expect him to last till morning.'

Young Mr. Barter's mind was active, and accustomed to rapid movement. He knew at once that the old servant read the signs of disturbance in his face and manner, and how far he misread them. So, to insure the misreading, he took out his handkerchief, and groaned at this melancholy intelligence.

'I——,' began Bommaney, stammering and speaking a little thickly, 'I didn't come to ask about your father.' Young Barter's heart at this, though he was perfectly prepared for it, began to beat like a sledgehammer. 'I've had a dreadful loss. I have called nowhere but at your office since I left my own, and I have lost eight thousand pounds. I am convinced that I must have left it there.'

'I can't think so, Mr. Bommaney,' said Barter, with a face of innocence.' We can go back together, if you like, and look for it.' Bommaney's driver lingered for him; the other cabman was already jingling leisurely down the street.

'Johnson,' said young Barter, addressing the domestic, 'you hear what Mr. Bommaney says. This is a matter of the most urgent importance, and must be looked into at once. Tell my mother that I have been home, and that I have been called suddenly back on urgent business.' Bommaney stood in a kind of stupid trance, and the young man, taking him by the arm, had some ado to secure his attention. 'Come! Come, sir,' he said; 'we will look into this at once. You must not remain in suspense about such a matter.'

They rustled together through the straw which had been laid down upon the roadway, and had been scattered by the feet of passers-by upon the pavement, and, mounting the cab, drove in a ghastly silence for a score of yards, and then, with a clatter which made conversation difficult, Bommaney, rousing himself at intervals, shouted his certainty that the notes would prove to have been left at Barter's chambers. Barter, growing curiously inured to the circumstances of the case, shouted back that he dared to say they would be; that it was very likely; that he really did not see where else Mr.