The young man rose quickly. "No," he said promptly, "I intend to offer a reward." "Ah! You wish to have this lady hanged." "If she is guilty, why not?" he asked bluntly, "But if you will have the truth, Mr. Vance, I don't care either one way or the other about a possible hanging. I want to find the glass eye." "And you think the lady has it?" "I--I--I suppose so," he muttered in a hesitating manner, then burst out: "Yes, indeed, I _do_ want to find the glass eye. There's a fortune connected with it, Mr. Vance--a large fortune." "Oh!" I could not help betraying surprise. "So this was why Mrs. Caldershaw attached such value to it?" "Exactly. In some way--I don't exactly know how--that eye reveals the whereabouts of the fortune I speak of." "Humph. Do you mean to say that Mrs. Caldershaw concealed her money and concealed its whereabouts in her glass eye?" "Yes, I do, in a way. That is, this fortune does not consist of my aunt's savings. I have those and the shop also. But when she lived at Burwain, she talked of a large fortune--some fifty thousand pounds, she mentioned on one occasion--which was concealed somewhere." "Whose fortune was it?" "I can't say. But my father, her brother--he's dead now--was always bothering her about the money. She never would tell him anything, but said that when she died he could learn all he wanted to know from the glass eye. As my father has passed over, of course the glass eye along with the money comes to me,--the fortune also. Fifty thousand pounds!" He raised his arms with an ecstatic expression. "What couldn't I do with such a heap of coin, Mr. Vance. Why I could marry----" He halted, cast an uneasy look on me, and again began to sort the letters. "Oh, you're in love," I said smiling. "A man of my age is always in love," he remarked curtly. "But never mind about that, I want to find some clue to the glass eye," and he tossed over the papers feverishly. "To its whereabouts?" "No, I know that much. The person who murdered my aunt has the eye, and killed her for the sake of learning the secret. But my aunt may have left some letter, or paper, or description, saying _how_ the eye can reveal the whereabouts of the fifty thousand pounds. Can you imagine," he sat back on his hams, "how the eye can be the clue?" "No," I said, after a pause, "unless there is a piece of paper hidden in it." "Oh, that's impossible. Do you know what a glass eye is like?" "Well, no, I have never seen one, unless fixed in a person's head." Striver laughed. "I had the same idea about a piece of paper," he explained carefully, "and went to an optician in Tarhaven to examine an eye. I suppose you think--as I did--that an artificial eye is the shape and size and the fatness of an almond." "Something like that," I admitted, "with the paper enclosed within."