“No,” Father Daugherty answered. He had been a little surprised himself. There was something disappointing in the size of the package. He had never seen so much money before, and its tremendous power, its tremendous power for evil, as he suddenly thought, was concentrated in a compass so small that the mind could but slowly wheel about to the new conception. The locksmith spoke. “Might I--might I--hold it a second--in my own hand?” he said. The priest gave the bundle into the hand hardened by so much honest toil. The man held it, heaving it up and down incredulously, testing its weight. Then he gave it back. “Thanks,” he said, and sighed. The two aldermen had returned from their little conference. “Your riverence,” began McQuirk hesitatingly, “might we have a word with you--in private?” He looked suspiciously at the workman. The priest went with them a little way apart. “We know about that,” McQuirk pointed to the bundle. “You do, do you?” said the priest sharply. “Yes, Father,” Bretzenger said. “It’s--it’s--well, it belongs to the company, sir.” “What company?” “Well, you know, the new ga--ah, that is, Mr. Baldwin, the lawyer. You know him?” “George R.?” asked Father Daugherty. “Yes, your riverence,” said both men hopefully. “It should go back to him.” The priest looked at them, and they caught again that amused expression in his face. It put them ill at ease, and it roused resentment in Bretzenger, who felt that this calm priest could read him too well. “None of it belongs to you, then, I suppose?” observed Father Daugherty. “Ah, well--of course,” McQuirk urged, and his tone showed that he was trying, in his crude way, to impress the priest with an honest disinterestedness. “Of course, Jimmy was entitled to his piece.” “Sure!” Bretzenger said, swelling with the little virtue he had found to help him. “But you say it ought to go back to Baldwin, eh?” “That’s what we think, sir,” they chimed. “Well, he can come and identify it,” said Father Daugherty. He slowly wrapped the package up, and, unbuttoning his long, rusty coat a little way down from the throat, stuffed the money into an inner pocket. The deed seemed to madden Bretzenger, and he moved a step forward. The two others saw his motion. The priest did not move, but he turned a look on them, and raised his hand, and McQuirk quailed, a superstitious fear in his eyes. He stiffened his arm before Bretzenger, and stayed him. And then the priest stepped quietly to the safe, and pushed its door to with an arm that seemed too weak and frail to stir the heavy steel. “It looks to me, Michael,” he was saying gently, as if addressing McQuirk alone, “like personal property, and, as I’m the administrator, I suppose I’ll have to take charge of it. If any beside our dead friend own it, let them come forward and prove their claim, and identify their property in open court.”