"You say you met some boys who saw the burglars, who showed you a box of papers, which they had dropped in their flight, from which you took this will of which you have given me so strange an account. Did these boys have anything to do with your escape?" "Perhaps they did and perhaps they didn't--they proved my friends, and I shan't give them away." "That's right, never go back on your friends. Now, then, Frank Mansfield, do you know who I am?" "I know you are a detective." "So I am. My name is Caleb Hook." "I've often heard of you," said Frank, regarding him with some curiosity. And who has not! The name of Caleb Hook has for years been the most famous of the New York force. "No doubt," replied that individual, quietly. "But to return to our subject in which I am becoming more interested every moment. I see deeper into things than you can expect to, my boy, and let me tell you in what you have related I see evidences of a deep and carefully laid scheme, of which this bank robbery forms only a part. Let me see that will you found in the box." Frank took the document from his pocket and placed it in his hands. "I've had no time to read it through," he said. The detective opened the paper, the seals of which had already been broken when Frank first found it, and perused it in silence. "My boy," said he, as he came to the end, "let me tell you that this document is likely to prove of the greatest value to you. In it the testator--your grandfather, you say he is--relates that he has converted all his property, valued at over half a million, into gold and gems and has buried it in a place described in a sealed parchment which ought to accompany this will. All of this is to be yours at the age of twenty-two, under certain conditions; until then the document is to be secret, and its contents remain unknown. Now, where is that sealed parchment? That's the question before the house!" "I'm sure I can't tell," replied Frank, in astonishment. "It may be with the other papers in the box. Half a million! and all for me! And we all thought my grandfather died poor!" "It is very evident he did nothing of the sort. Jeremiah Mansfield--Jeremiah Mansfield--let me see--wasn't that the miserly old fellow who was murdered in Harlem some five years ago?" "Yes: his house was entered by burglars in the night. They killed him, and no property except the old house was ever found, although until then my father thought him to be rich." "And it seems he was right," replied Hook, musingly. "Then your father was Francis Mansfield, the foreign importer, who was said--who----"