"Scratch! scratch! rap!" It was in the bookcase--in the lower part where were drawers shut in by solid doors. These he had never explored, but knew that his wife kept pamphlets and papers in them. He opened the outer doors cautiously, and listened again, until assured by the scratching that his search was in the right direction. There were three drawers--two deep, the third and upper shallow. This he drew out and examined. It contained writing-paper and envelopes, all in good order. Nor was there any sign of the intruder amongst the loose music and periodicals in the second. The lower one was locked--no doubt accidentally, for he had never seen Sarah lock up anything except jewels and money. Their servants were honest, and she had no cause to fear investigation on his part. Feeling, rather than arguing thus, he removed the drawer above, leaving exposed the locked one, and thrust his hand down into it. It encountered the polished surface of a small box or case, which he was in the act of drawing through the aperture left by the second drawer, when something dark and swift ran over his hand and up his sleeve. With a violent start, he dashed the casket to the floor, and another energetic fling of his arm dislodged the mouse. His first care was to pursue and kill it; his next to examine into the damage it had indirectly produced. The box--ebony, lined with sandal-wood--had fallen with such force as to loosen the spring, and lay on its side wide open; its treasures strewed over the carpet. They were neither numerous, nor in themselves valuable. A bouquet of dried flowers, enveloped in silver paper, lay nearest Lewis' hand, as he knelt to pick up the scattered articles. The paper was tied about the stalks of the flowers with black ribbon, and to this was attached a card: "Will Miss Sarah accept this trifling token of regard from one who is her stanch friend, and hopes, in time, to have a nearer claim upon her esteem?" The hand was familiar to the reader as Philip Benson's. Why should Sarah preserve this, while the many floral tokens of his love which she had received were flung away when withered like worthless weeds? The pang of jealousy was new--sharp as the death-wrench to the heart-strings, cruel as the grave! The card was without date, or he would have read, with a different apprehension of its meaning, the harmless clause--"And hopes in time to have a nearer claim upon her esteem." There was a time, then, when, as Lucy had taunted her husband, he might have married her sister! when Sarah loved him, and had reason to think herself beloved in return! What was this sable badge but the insignia of a bereaved heart, that mourned still in secret the faithlessness of her early love, or the adverse fate that had sundered him from her, and given him to another?