"Certainly, Doctor," replied Searle suavely, yielding his place. Nevertheless, there was a slight expression of surprise upon his face, as upon those of the others, at the minister’s sudden revival of concern in what must now be an utterly trifling detail so far as his own future went. Hampstead appeared to perceive this. "There are sacred responsibilities here," he explained gravely, with a halting utterance that proclaimed the deeps that heaved within him; "which, strange as it may seem to you gentlemen, even at such an hour I would not like to forget." Taking up a handful of the papers, he ran them through his fingers, his eye pausing for a moment to scan each one of them, and his expression kindling with first one memory and then another, as if he found a mournful satisfaction in recalling past days when many a man and woman had found peace for their souls in making him the sharer in their heart-burdens,—days which every member of that little circle felt instinctively were now gone forever. Last of all his eye checked itself upon the envelope marked "Wadham Currency." Allowing the other papers to slip back to their place in the box the minister turned his glance into the open side of this remaining envelope. It was empty, save for a card tucked in the corner. "This thing appears to have served its purpose," he commented absently, as if talking to himself. Then casually he tore the envelope across, and then again and again; finer and finer; yet not so fine as to excite suspicion. Looking for a wastebasket and finding none, he was about to drop the fragments in his coat pocket. "I will take them," said the vault custodian, holding out his hand. To it the minister unhesitatingly committed the shredded envelope and card which contained the only documentary clue to any other person than himself as the thief of the Dounay diamonds. A few minutes later, this clue was in the wastebasket outside. The next morning it was in the furnace. The group in the vault room broke away with dispirited slowness, as mourners turn from the freshly heaped earth. Behind all the minister lingered, as if unwilling to leave the presence of his dead reputation. But the man’s appearance somewhat belied his mood. He was thinking swiftly. This was no uncommon plot which had overtaken him. It was conceived in craft and laid with power to kill. The diabolical cunning of the scheme was that it forced him to be silent or to be a traitor. The indications were that he had been betrayed outrageously; but he did not know this positively, therefore he could venture no defense at all against this black array of circumstances. It might be only some terrible mistake, and for him to venture more now than the most general denial might bring about the very calamities he was trying to avert. He dared not even tell the truth: that he did not know the diamonds were in the box. Especially, he dared not say that he did not put them there.