“None of your business, I should say, Miss Corrie.” “I say different. But I only want ye to satisfy me that ye are dealing fair with my brother—” “How dare you insinuate—” “No need for temper,” she went on steadily. “John maybe wouldna like to ask ye himself, but I’m going to put a straight question, for it’s been on my mind for a while now—” “Kindly come to the point.” “I will! Have ye or have ye not parted wi’ any o’ the shares?” His indignation was well assumed. “If you were a man—” he began. “But I’m only a woman, and not one of the blind, trusting sort, Mr. Symington. Still, I’m as curious as any.” Suddenly he gave an ironic laugh. “Very well, Miss Corrie; I don’t want you to lose any more of your beauty sleep, so I give you my word that—” “And ye’ll let me see the certificates, Mr. Symington,” she interrupted very firmly. For an instant he hesitated. He might tell her that they were in his banker’s safe. But no: better exhibit them and have done with the matter. “If I was not aware of your affection for your brother,” he said, “I’d consider your request an insult, and refuse it point-blank. However, you can come along to the house and be satisfied.” He prepared for other questions, but she asked none, and presently he was showing her into the farm-house parlour, saying: “I’ll fetch them at once.” She waited in the twilight, listening with all her nerves, as it were. She heard him go upstairs, she counted his movements in the room directly overhead. Symington knew he was taking no small risk. Originally the certificates, folded separately, had made a tape-tied bundle of ten, each certificate representing five hundred shares. Now there were only nine. But Symington took from his pocket a certificate for one hundred shares, and inserted it in the bundle. He could not tell how familiar she might be with the documents, but he trusted that she would be satisfied with finding the number of them correct, and reckoned that if she did insist on examining them separately, the dusk would prevent her detecting the discrepancy. So he came downstairs, whistling. “Thank ye,” she said at once, without even touching the bundle; “I’ll be getting home now.” For she had discovered what she wanted to know—not with her eyes, but with her ears. “Silly old fool!” Symington remarked to himself, much relieved, as he went upstairs again. “I needn’t go on worrying about her, anyway.” He entered his bedroom, returned the one hundred share certificate to his pocket, and deposited the bundle in an immensely heavy oaken chest, steel-bound and fastened to the floor in the window. It had been the Symington “strong box” for generations. Only lately had the idea of superseding it with a modern safe occurred to the present owner.