"You might think it a surgeon's pocket-kit, son, but you would be greatly in error. Drills, jimmies, even a light hammer--and here's a little contrivance that has been known to pluck the secret from most intricate combinations--my own invention. The common yegg habit of pouring an explosive fluid into the cracks of a strong box is obsolete. I hold that such a procedure is vulgar, besides being calculated to make an ugly noise when not perfectly muffled. By George, Archie, it occurs to me that you must have left your kit behind you in that absurd drug store at the Harbor! It is just as well that you are no longer encumbered with those playthings. Trust the Governor in future. I'm yearning for a cool grapefruit, so bestir yourself." "I want to learn all the modern improvements," said Archie, fingering the burglar tools. "I've been playing the game wrong--decidedly wrong!" "My favorite pupil!" cried the Governor, from the tub in which he was already rolling and splashing. "You shall be my successor when I pass on to other fields. Destiny has thrown you in my path for this very purpose. You will rank high among the crooks of all history, the king of the underworld, feared and loved by the great comradeship who prey upon the world by night!" Archie felt very humble under these promises and prophecies, and wondered whether there was really deep down in his soul some moral obliquity that the acute master crook had detected and responded to. There had been clergymen and philanthropists among Archie's forebears, but never murderer or thief, and he was half-persuaded that he was the predestined black sheep that he had always heard gave a spot of color to the whitest flock. At the breakfast table the Governor scanned a local paper and with a chirrup passed it to Archie, pointing to a double-column headline: A CARNIVAL OF BURGLARY IN MAINE Archie's eyes fell upon the bizarre photograph of a dead man with which the page was illustrated, and he choked on a fragment of grapefruit as he read the inscription: "Dead Thief, Identity Unknown." It was a ghastly thing with which to be confronted; and his perturbation increased as he read an account of the killing. It was in the house of Mr. Waldo S. Cummings, a cottager, that the man had been shot, the mortal wound being inflicted by the householder's son, after an exciting battle. The dead body of the burglar had been found on the shore and the whole coast was being searched for his accomplice. "That's poor old Hoky all right," murmured the Governor, buttering a piece of toast reflectively. "How indecent to prop up a corpse that way and take a snapshot merely to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a silly public! As you seem to be entranced with the literary style of our Bailey Harbor correspondent, I shall take the liberty of helping you to a fried egg." However, Archie's appetite was pretty effectually spoiled by this paragraph: