These two drove home together, very silent, Maxwell in great wrath at such an extraordinary warning, John consumed with a desire to betray to him the secret of Marion. He could scarcely open his lips for fear it should burst forth. A dozen times at least he had framed the words. She is not what you think. There is something I could tell. I could put her in jail if I pleased. This last came most frequently of all. I could put her--in jail. He said it actually under his breath. He repeated it over a dozen times. He could not understand why his companion did not hear him. He seemed to himself to have another motive in speaking from that which anybody would imagine. It was not to expose Marion but to test Maxwell. He thought if the fellow knew as much as he knew, he would give her up at once: and with all his soul, he wanted to put this other man to the test. I don't know how it was that the secret was kept, nor did John know. He thought it was chiefly the noise of the post-chaise. Next day John was very restless and excited, unable to keep quiet or to go on with his work. He had taken his hat two or three times to go out, but then reflected that to go during the day would be to call forth suspicion, and perhaps give some other person of a detective cast of mind a clue to the mystery. He was not at all himself of the detective mind, and, indeed, the thing was not known, and certainly not prized in those days. A thief-catcher it would have been called, and "Set a thief to catch a thief" was a suggestion which everybody thought of in that connection. But he went out in the afternoon, walking sedately over the high-standing hill, and reaching the foot just as the evening began to darken. He made his way again with the same shuffling and sliding over the muddy field, and, reaching the little declivity behind the rowan-trees, began his investigation. The roots were so tangled and twisted, so loosely filled up with earth and stones, that but for the clayey consistence of the soil, and the damp that penetrated through and through, he would have feared to bring the entire mound about his ears. It took him a long time, and the evening grew darker and darker, and he had almost ceased to hope for any further revelation, when suddenly the stick with which he was digging struck upon something which gave forth a metallic sound. With a sort of fury he rushed at it again, and struggling with a shower of falling stones, and the stem of one young tree which fell upon his arm, jamming it against the side, he at last managed to extract a large article, partly metallic, which was deeply lodged among the roots of the trees. He could scarcely make out its shape in the darkness, but, half by sight and half by feeling it with his hands, made sure, with a sensation which brought the blood rushing to his heart, that it was the mail-bag. He had scarcely quieted down after this discovery, when, looking up from his extraordinary