‘I wonder if they’re worth anything,’ he said to himself. ‘I wish I’d learned to read. Eddication ain’t a bad thing, even in our profession.’ The papers which he drew from their hiding-place were those which Squire Heritage had placed in his deed box the night of the robbery. The rings and bracelets and the other valuables were not here. They had long ago been unset and disposed of in a market which has always been safe and still continues so. In fact, it is so safe that valuable jewels are almost as readily sold nowadays as they are easily stolen, and that is saying a great deal. Josh Heckett looked over his store, lifting up now this and now that, examining everything carefully and putting it back again. Taking up odds and ends haphazard, he drew out a little bundle carefully tied up, which had evidently not been disturbed for years. The wrapper was yellow with age. ‘My poor girl’s things,’ he murmured. ‘Poor lass! it’s tea year since I gathered’em together and put’em here to be safe, and I ain’t set eyes on’em since.’ He opened the bundle and looked through it. He rubbed his great coarse hands carefully on his jacket before he touched the contents, then tenderly and reverently he lifted the dead girl’s treasures from the bundle. There was the little locket she always wore when he took her out on Sundays; there was the bit of blue ribbon, the last that ever decked her hair; there were her thimble and her scissors; there was the faded old daguerreotype of Josh and his wife and Gertie when she was a baby. He looked at the faint, blurred picture now, and he remembered the day it had been taken, when he’d driven the missus down to some cockney haunt, and the travelling photographer had persuaded him to have his likeness taken. There was a queer watery look about the old reprobate’s eyes as he gazed at the coarsely framed and faded picture, and he gave a grunt that bore the nearest possible resemblance to a sigh which a man of his build and nature could accomplish. He put down the picture, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, cleared his throat, and then drew out a big leather-bound book. ‘My poor gal’s Bible,’ he said. ‘She was mighty fond o’ readin’ it at times.’ Josh eyed the outside of the Bible curiously. ‘They say it’s a hinvallyable book,’ he muttered; ‘but it don’t look up to much. I should’a thought a hinvallyable book’ud a been bound in red or green and had a lot o’ gold about it. This here’s worth about fourpence, I should say. But she thought a lot on it, poor gal; and I ain’t going never to part with it for her sake.’ Josh put the took back again without opening it. He couldn’t have read what was in it if he had. And yet there Was that in his dead daughter’s Bible which, had he known it, Would have made his greedy eyes glisten and his evil heart beat quicker. CHAPTER XXXIV. A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.