"You made a mistake not to study these worthies, Chelda," she said, ironically. "Just listen,--'Uncle Sam's Hawkshaws in secret service work. An ingenious organisation of counterfeiters. Thefts of valuables. Eight hundred post-offices robbed every year. New ones constructed with peep-holes enabling detectives to watch clerks and carriers at work. Secret passages and stairs connected with basement.' I wonder what century we are in? This sounds like the Middle Ages,--'Extraordinary tale of a postal clerk who rifled letters by his sense of smell.' I don't wonder he could smell some bank-notes. But he knew fresh ones, too. Clever man, and misplaced ingenuity. I should not like to get my living that way. Come, listen to this,--you can discover a bank-note in an envelope by drawing a thread through with a knot in it." "Can you? In what way?" asked Chelda, without raising her head from her work. "Some of the fibre paper of the note will come out with the knot. Ah, here is the cut of a sneak thief who dropped his hat over a package of three thousand dollar notes in the issue room of the Treasury and carried them away without being discovered. Here also is a lady who added to her small income in the redemption division by raising dollar bills into tens. Accomplished young person,--sure to get on until discovered. That is the drawback connected with all this smartness. My dear, don't you want to go into opium smuggling? You can hollow out a cargo of logs and fill them with the drug and make your fortune. You can bribe firemen and stokers to hide it in coal where it is almost impossible to find it. You can put it in between the walls of state-rooms. You can drop it overboard in cans with sinkers and floats attached, or carry it in buckets with false bottoms. Perhaps, though, you will want to go into the diamond business. In that case, you can invest abroad in the gems and bring them to this country under a porous plaster on your back, or in the heels of your shoes, or inside the Paris doll you are bringing to your niece, or you can get a pet pelican and feed him with diamonds until his pouch is full. Bah! take the book away,--it sickens me. No, Derrice, you cannot see it. You are too young to read of such rascalities. Captain Veevers, I give it to you. Take the pitchy thing out of my house." "What would you do with those people?" asked Chelda, softly drawing a silk thread out of her work. "With what people,--criminals, you mean?" asked her aunt. "Yes,--those low creatures who prey on society?" "I would do with them just what is done now; only I should be more severe." "As you were last night," remarked Chelda, in a low voice. Her aunt did not hear her. She was addressing a question to Derrice, "Child, suppose all the criminals in the world were suddenly thrown into your power; what would you do with them?"