Lelia’s maid having furnished them a clever description of the house, they found it, as she had told them, very carelessly guarded indeed, and had effected an easy entrance through an unbolted window. The inmates of The Crags had always dwelt in careless security, having never been harassed by burglars. The Willoughbys, when not entertaining guests, always kept their silver plate at the bank in the nearest town, and their money the same. Miss Willoughby always felt that these facts were too generally known for her to entertain fears of robbery. She might have rested still in security, but that Lelia’s handsome diamonds had been coveted for some time by a band of thieves in the city of Charleston, where she lived. Finding them too closely guarded there, they had followed, by her maid’s advice, into the country. And the fates had smiled on them in the time chosen for the burglary. The men were all gone to seek for the missing girl, and while Lelia sang in the music-room, and her aunt listened in the hall, the two men below, in the dining-room, were loading up a coarse sack with as much gold and silver plate as they thought they could conveniently get away with in safety. This job completed, they dropped the sack out of the window, down into some thick shrubberies, to be recovered after they had possessed themselves of the case of jewels. They chuckled over the ease of their undertaking, and wasted some moments that were more precious to them than they knew in taking a cold lunch in the pantry. Their impromptu feast over, they cautiously ascended the stairs, the echo of their footfalls drowned by the soft, rich carpets, as well as by the sound of Lelia’s singing. “This is a regular cinch, Jack,” cried Larkin, as they penetrated the unlocked door of the guest-chamber, where obsequious servants had already lighted the lamps for Miss Ritchie’s retiring. “What mystifies me is what has become o’ all the menfolk that belong here. Don’t seem to be no one in the house but them two wemmen. I swan, I believe that them men we passed in the light wagon, ’way down the road, must have come from here, don’t you think so?” whispered Jack, as they cautiously explored the adjoining dressing-room, where the maid had said the trunks would be stored. Larkin agreed with him, and declared that they were in great luck, and must hurry up and get the jewels before Miss Ritchie came up to retire. They proceeded to pick locks and go through the trunks, seeking the coveted case of jewels. And in their careless sense of security, emboldened by their success in the dining-room, they forgot to lock the door of the outside apartment while they labored with a will overturning trunks of dainty clothing, until the floor was a litter of silk and lace and lingerie. The very last trunk was reached before the treasure was found. “Now let us be gone!” one muttered jubilantly; but, alas! at that very moment a disconcerting interruption occurred.