There was small drawers in that cupboard, and an empty space in the middle of 'em. He slides a piece of wood aside there, and takes a key from his pocket, and unlocks a little door at the back among the drawers, and he puts the envelope in there, and locks it up again. Then he goes back to his arm-chair by the fireside. 'Bob Gartley,' I says to myself, 'maybe you've found out something to-night, and maybe you haven't, but you'd best keep a still tongue in your head.' So I never tells no one, not even my missis here." "That you didn't!" agreed Mrs. Gartley. "I'd be the last you'd tell. I can't make out what you're drivin' at." "You wait and see, and you'll find out fast enough. That night as I looked through the window was the very one afore old Mr. Ledbury was took bad and died. When it came to readin' his will, there was a lot of talk in the village, and folks said as a big sum of money were missing, and couldn't be traced nohow, and he must have gambled it away. I'd my own ideas on the subject." "But didn't you tell anybody?" gasped Githa. "Not I! It weren't none of my business. I'd enough trouble on my own account just then, for me to want to be mixed up in anyone else's affairs." "I remember!" exclaimed Mrs. Gartley. "You was doin' time. You got three months hard for puttin' a bullet through the keeper's hat." "It don't matter what I were doin'," said Bob sulkily. "At any rate, I'd an engagement wot kept me from puttin' myself in a public position. When I gets back to Heathwell, do you think I were anxious to go and interview Mr. Wilfred Ledbury just then, and tell him my views? No, I'd had enough of lawyers for the present. They was inclined to doubt my word, somehow, and it hurts an honest man's feelin's to be told as he's a liar. I thought I'd keep my eye, though, on that little cupboard, but I found there'd been an auction, and it were sold. I couldn't get on the track of it, do what I would, or hear who'd a-got it, and I gives it up as a bad job. Then one day that young lady comes into the house paintin' our Hugh. There were an oak cupboard in her picture, and I knows it again in a minute." "You don't mean to say----" cried Gwethyn, springing to her feet. "Aye, but I do! That be the very one as I sees old Mr. Ledbury put the envelope inside!" * * * * *