As he sat silent now in the light of the beautiful day, with his trouble heavy upon him, and suffering from the remorse that is not born of repentance, all the circumstances of the theft spread themselves swiftly before him. The money had been stolen in just the way his grandfather had surmised in the interview that took place between them on the night of his mother's death. He had seen his grandfather go often to the iron box, and he suspected that it contained money. One day, when his grandfather was not at home, he tried the cupboard in which the iron box was placed for safety, and found it locked. Seeing a key upon the mantelshelf, and believing it to be the key of the iron box, he ran out of the room with it, and took an impression of it, and from the impression had a false key made. Then, on the very night his grandfather had mentioned, he watched the old man out of the house, and took the iron box from the unlocked cupboard. He opened the box, and was taking the money from it when he heard a sound from the bed behind him. Turning, he saw his mother with her eyes open, as he thought, watching him. For a few moments he could not stir, he was so dismayed; but a sigh from his mother which was half a groan completely aroused him, and going to the bed he found his mother asleep. Relieved, he completed the theft. This scene was always before his eyes when he was in trouble; when his money affairs were easy, and he had sufficient for the day, he rarely thought of it. He had quite made up his mind that, supposing his mother had been awake, he would have told her all--how that he had used money belonging to his employers, not for the first time; that it was imperative he should replace it; and that it was better to take for a time these savings, hoarded up by his grandfather for a then unknown purpose, rather than allow exposure to come. "Mother would have given me right," he often thought, but he did not have the opportunity of testing whether his thought was correct. All his life he was never to know whether his mother had gone down to the grave with the consciousness that her son, as well as her husband, was a thief. CHAPTER XXV. ALFRED NEGLECTS THE WARNING OF DON'T TOUCH ME, AND RUES IT.