"I forget, my dear, whether I ever mentioned to you that among my many acquaintances is numbered Sir Peter Warrendale, a baronet of old family, whose home, when he is at home, is somewhere in your benighted part of the country. Of late years, however, he has been seen a good deal in town. I have a notion that his health is not quite what he would like it to be, and that he has little or no faith in your rural practitioners, which I can't wonder at. But that is his own secret. "He is now well on for seventy, a tetchy, cross-grained old man, with a good word for nobody behind their back; and I have not the least doubt he pulls me to pieces before others, just as he pulls others to pieces before me. I candidly confess that I don't like him, but he helps to amuse me, and to any one who does that I can forgive much. "I had not seen him for some little time till one evening about a week ago, when he called upon me, evidently brimful of news, of which it was needful that he should relieve himself to somebody if he wished to escape a fit of apoplexy. I quite expected that I was about to be treated to the latest scandalous _on dit_, or the most recent morsel of society gossip, which would lose nothing in Sir Peter's telling, but for once I was mistaken. What he had to tell me was the particulars of a somewhat singular incident in which he had figured as one of the chief actors. "It would appear that several months ago Sir Peter, while travelling in his own chariot, was stopped by a mounted highwayman and relieved, among other things, of a choice snuff-box--an heirloom, and set with brilliants--by which he set great store. Although the affair happened in his own part of the country, when he came to town, a few weeks later, he reported his loss at Bow Street, and handed in a full description of the box. This he did in the faint hope that the box might some day find its way to one of the London pawnbrokers--to each of whom a description of it would have been furnished--and, through him, back to its rightful owner. "Time went on, and Sir Peter had given up all hope of ever seeing his box again, when he was one day requested to betake himself to Bow Street, and there, sure enough, he set eyes once more on his precious heirloom. It had been found on the person of a low London thief who had been arrested for something altogether different. "But now comes the most singular feature of the affair. The box had been _twice_ stolen, once, several months ago, from the person of Sir Peter, and a second time, a few weeks ago, here in London, from the person of a certain Mr. Geoffrey Dare, and both losses had been notified to the authorities.