‘Trouble me? very far from it. I had counted on spending my evening with Lucille—and you, if you are well enough to be plagued with my company.’ ‘You know I always like your company. But to-night I have something to do; some papers that I want to look over, of no particular importance either to myself or those that come after me; old documents connected with my business career and what not. But I want to set my house in order before I leave it for a narrower one. Now, Davoren, I want you to hunt up some of these papers for me. I have sent that old fumbler, Jacob Wincher, to look for them, but the man is purblind, I suppose, for he did not succeed in finding them. They are in an old oak cabinet in a loft where I keep the dregs of my collection. Lucille will show you the place. Here is the key—the lock is a curious one—and the papers are stowed away in odd corners of the cabinet; inner drawers which brokers call secret, but which a child might discover at the first glance. Bring me all the papers you find there.’ ‘Do you wish me to make the search now, sir, or in the evening?’ ‘In the evening, of course. It is a business to be done at your leisure. But you must have daylight for it. Come back as early as you can, like a good fellow; I have a fancy for looking over those papers to-night. Heaven only knows how many days remain to me.’ ‘The same doubt hangs over the lives of all of us,’ answered Lucius. ‘Your case is by no means alarming.’ ‘I don’t know that. I have a presentiment of evil, an instinctive apprehension of danger, like that which all nature feels before the coming of a storm.’ CHAPTER XVI. AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY. The thought of this conversation with Mr. Sivewright followed Lucius all through the day’s work. He meditated upon it in the intervals of his toil, and that meditation only tended to confirm him in his opinion as to the lonely old man. Soured and embittered by his son’s ingratitude, Homer Sivewright had consoled himself by the indulgence of that passion which is of all passions the most absorbing—the greed of gain. As he beheld his profits accumulate he became more and more parsimonious; surrendered without regret the pleasures for which he had no taste; and having learned in his poverty to live a life of hardship and deprivation, was contented to do without luxuries and even comforts which had never become necessary to his existence. Thus the sole delight of his days had been the accumulation of money, and who could tell how far the usurer’s exorbitant profits had gone to swell the tradesman’s honest gains? The art collection might have been little more than a cover for the money-lender’s less reputable commerce. Thus reasoned Lucius. He returned to Cedar House at about five in the afternoon, having dined hastily at a coffee-house in the Shadrack-road, in the midst of his day’s work.