The objects which he had carried in his hands fell on the table and unrolled themselves as inanimate things sometimes do as if there was life in them. They had been tightly done up, and fluttered out of the roll as they fell: the white handkerchief, folded like a bandage, which had been tied together at the ends, and retained even something of the roundness of the head on which it had been bound, fell quite open, revealing its use. The larger black one had also been tied, two of the ends together. She had got rid of them on the first possible moment, trusting no doubt to the thick Spanish lace of her veil, with its large silken flowers, to disguise her sufficiently: but where did she go from that little shelter in the field? how had she escaped eventually, in the dark midnight, over the slippery, wet ground--so dark you could not see your hand held up before you, so wet and soft, your foot sinking into the clay? John sat by his fire, and asked himself why he had been so hot in this discovery, and what he had wanted to do. Did he want to convict her, to bring her to shame, a girl who had done him no harm, who (he said to himself) had, after all, done nobody any harm,--except perhaps the bank, which was impersonal and could not suffer much. It was true that it would not do to establish a precedent, and rob his Majesty's mails, when they happened to contain something disagreeable to you. But then, there were very few people in the world who would have the nerve and the strength to do that; and indeed, when you came to think, it was as much the carelessness of the guard, putting such a temptation in the way, as the boldness of the culprit, which was to blame. If he had not left them within everybody's reach, she would not have attempted to get them. The guilt was with the guard. Then, if he himself had kept awake and not gone to sleep like a great baby, she would not have done it. Did he wish he had not gone to sleep? Did he wish the guard had not been so careless? Did he wish that the family should have been disgraced, and the prodigal ruined? John caught himself up with a start. What did it matter who was ruined? No one not with the purest motives, not with the most tender meaning, had a right to take the law in his or her hands. She had made herself amenable to the law--and not only so, but the position was untenable from any point of fact: it was a crime, it struck at the roots of every security. She was a thief! a thief! and of the most dangerous kind.