“They wouldn’t try for my little store; it wouldn’t be worth their while,” said Mr. Reade, with undisturbed good-humor. “If Laurence were at home, perhaps I’d get him to send the lot off; but I can’t see after things myself; and, if I put ’em all in a cart and packed ’em off to Beaconsburgh, the chances are they would all get tilted into a ditch. So they must take their chance in the old chest at home. I’ve given Williamson a blunderbuss--but I think it frightens him more than it would a thief--and I sleep with a revolver at my bedside; and a man can’t do more.” “Don’t you think the thieves will be caught, Mr. Rayner?” asked Gregson, the village carpenter, timidly. It was rumored that he had fifteen pounds and a pair of silver muffineers hidden away somewhere; and he turned to Mr. Rayner, who always took the lead naturally in any discussion, with much anxiety. “Not in the least likely,” answered Mr. Rayner decisively. “Why should they be? They might be if they had their equals in wits pitted against them; but they haven’t. The ordinary detective has the common defect of vulgar minds, want of resource. The thief, if he is clever enough to be a successful jewel-robber, has the abilities of a general. The bolder he is, the more certain he is of success. The detective, in spite of repeated failures, believes himself infallible. If I were a thief, I should commit robberies as nearly as possible under the detective’s nose. That astute being would never suspect the man who braved him to his face.” “Ah, it’s very fine to talk,” said one acute villager, who thought Mr. Rayner was really going too far; “but, when it came to the detective being there, you’d be about as bold as the rest of us, I’m thinking.” Mr. Rayner laughed good-humoredly enough, and said perhaps he was right; and I heard the acute villager bragging of having put down Mr. Rayner, who, he said, was a bit bumptious for just a gentleman-fiddler, and wasn’t so much cleverer than the rest of ’em, he guessed, for all his talk. At dinner Mr. Rayner tried again to induce his wife to go to Monaco, and encouraged me to join my persuasions to his, which I did most heartily. But to all we said she only replied steadily and coldly that she disliked travelling, did not feel well enough to undertake a journey, and preferred remaining at the Alders. She added, in the same parrot-like tone, that she thought the change would do me and Haidee good, and that it was very kind of my mother to go. After dinner I ran upstairs to my room, and, opening the door softly, found Haidee dozing by the fire. So I sat down to write my scarcely-begun letter to Laurence.