They were the trust deeds and other papers connected with Miss Amy Rivers’ property. Some of them were documents distinctly worth locking up, because if the Public Prosecutor could have run his eye through the collection for one short five minutes, he would infallibly have procured for the saintly Mr. Theodore Shelf seven complete years of penal servitude. It is an unpleasant thing to level such a hint against so good a man; but a fact or so will show solid reason for it. During the two preceding years—partly through depression in trade, partly through his wife’s broadcast extravagance—Theodore Shelf had found himself in desperate straits for money. He had raised funds this way and that by all legitimate means; had plunged, but with evil fortune; and finally had been reduced to making his daily income by less reputable means. For long he had laid covetous eyes on the fortune of his late partner, Marmaduke Rivers, which was held in trust for the daughter by himself and a canon of Winchester; and at last, in a moment of desperation, he determined to have the use of it. The co-trustee was a man who had taken a double-first at Oxford, and apparently spent all his life’s energies over the process. He had settled down into an amiable country parson, who bred prize-bantams, and wrote books on Armenian folk-lore. He was extremely upright, vastly unsuspicious, and on matters of business possessed an ignorance of unusual profundity. He respected Theodore Shelf, and disliked him with an equal intenseness. When Shelf made up his mind to tamper with the Rivers property, he did not go through the formality of asking this good gentleman’s leave and permission. He simply forged himself a power of attorney, signed it with the excellent canon’s name and set to work. Being a man who never did anything by halves, he did not take two bites at the cherry. He annexed the whole of his ward’s property, lock, stock, and barrel, and paid in the usual interest to her bankers with entire regularity. Humanly speaking, there was not a chance of his being found out; and when fortune smiled on him again he had every intention of repaying to the uttermost farthing what he had taken. As has been said, he liked Amy Rivers extremely, and, if he had not had his worthy self to consider, he would have been the last person in the world to do her an injury.