The tube was not there, either; and he shut the drawer to again, carefully and gently--for inside it was the Hair Bracelet that had belonged to Madonna’s mother, lying on the white handkerchief, which had also been taken from the dead woman’s pocket. Just as he closed the drawer, he heard footsteps at his right hand, and turned in that direction rather suspiciously--locking down the lid of the bureau as he looked round. It was only the civil Mr. Gimble, wanting to know what Mr. Blyth was searching for, and whether he could help him. Valentine mentioned the loss of the tube; and Mr. Gimble immediately volunteered to make one of pasteboard. “Ten thousand thanks,” said Mr. Blyth, hooking the key to his watch-guard again, as he returned to Lady Brambledown with his friend. “Ten thousand thanks; but the worst of it is, I don’t know where to find the pasteboard.” If, instead of turning to the right hand to speak to Mr. Gimble, Valentine had turned to the left, he would have seen that, just as he opened the bureau and began to search in it, Mr. Marksman finding the way into the painting-room clear once more, had rolled himself quietly round the door-post again; and had then, just as quietly, bent forward a little, so as to look sideways into the bureau with those observant eyes of his which nothing could escape, and which had been trained by his old Indian experience to be always unscrupulously at work, watching something. Little did Mr. Blyth think, as he walked away, talking with Mr. Gimble, and carefully hooking his key on to its swivel again, that Zack’s strange friend had seen as much of the inside of the bureau as he had seen of it himself. “He shut up his big box uncommon sharp, when that smilin’ little chap come near him,” thought Mat. “And yet there didn’t seem nothing in it that strangers mightn’t see. There wasn’t no money there--at least none that _I_ set eyes on. Well! it’s not my business. Let’s have another look at the picter.” In the affairs of art, as in other matters, important discoveries are sometimes made, and great events occasionally accomplished, by very ignoble agencies. Mat’s deplorable ignorance of Painting in general, and grossly illiterate misunderstanding of the subject represented by Columbus in particular, seemed to mark him out as the last man in the world who could possibly be associated with Art Mystic in the character of guardian genius. Yet such was the proud position which he was now selected by Fate to occupy. In plain words, Mr. Blyth’s greatest historical work had been for some little time in imminent danger of destruction by falling; and Mat’s “look at the picter,” was the all-important look which enabled him to be the first person in the room who perceived that it was in peril.