"In the easiest way in the world," he replied, trying to brave it out. "It's the most transparent deception I ever saw. They've kept the thing a fortnight and had time to do anything with it. A child could see through this. Surely your bright wits can want no help to an explanation." "I am not so bright as you give me credit for," I answered. "Will you explain your meaning to me?" "With pleasure. They have evidently made an invisible slit in the joining of the box cover, and with a pair of fine forceps drawn the paper through it, bit by bit. For the pencil, they drew that by the same means to the slit and then pared it, little by little, with a lancet, till they could shake out the fragments." "That must have required very careful manipulation," I observed. "Naturally. But they've taken a fortnight to do it in." "But how about the arterial silk?" I said. "They must have procured some from a surgeon." "And your famous knots?" "They got some surgeon to tie them!" "But your crest and seal?" "Oh! they must have taken a facsimile of that in order to reproduce it. It is very cleverly done, but quite explicable!" "But you told me before you opened the packet that you would take your oath in a court of justice it had not been tampered with." "I was evidently deceived." "And you really believe, then, that an uneducated lad like Mr. Haxby would take the trouble to take impressions of seals and to procure arterial silk and the services of a surgeon, in order, not to mystify or convert _you_, but to gratify _me_, whose box he believes it to be." "I am sure he has done so!" "But just now you were equally sure he had _not_ done so. Why should you trust your senses in one case more than in the other? And if Mr. Haxby has played a trick on me, as you suppose, why did you not discover the slit when you examined the box, before opening?" "Because my eyes misled me!" "Then after all," I concluded, "the best thing you can say of yourself is that you--a man of reputed science, skill, and sense, and with a strong belief in your own powers--are unable to devise a test in which you shall not be outwitted by a person so inferior to yourself in age, intellect and education as young Haxby. But I will give you another chance. Make up another packet in any way you like. Apply to it the severest tests which your ingenuity can devise, or other men of genius can suggest to you, and let me give it to Haxby and see if the contents can be extracted, or tampered with a second time." "It would be useless," said Dr. H----. "If they were extracted through the iron panels of a fireproof safe, I would not believe it was done by any but natural means." "Because you do not _wish_ to believe," I argued.