appeared to have had but one object in view—the contents of the safe—and for that they had made without a single divergence right or left. Now, that is not at all like the ordinary housebreaker, who is never satisfied with a moderately good haul, but must go tearing, and searching, and smashing, and destroying all over a house before he is convinced that there is no more to carry off. Then, what professional housebreaker could have resisted at least tasting a bottle of those rare wines which were within arm’s length of him in the pantry! I have caught them drunk on the spot just through that weakness, but I never knew them to be so rigidly abstemious as to pass good drink untouched. When I had concluded my examination, the old gardener was very anxious to know my opinion. Had any one else plied me with the question, I might have answered, but with him I was forced for the present to be silent. The truth is, I suspected him, and nobody but him, as the thief. He was a poor man to begin with; the clothes he stood in were not worth ten shillings; and I was led to believe that being somewhat old and frail, and having a daughter entirely dependent upon him, these formed almost his sole possessions. I could not conceive, indeed, how so many had thought fit to trust him with the keys of their houses, but then I did not know that he had the reputation of being a sterling and honest man, respected alike for his deep religious feeling and humble worth. He had a poverty-stricken look to my eyes, and then his confusion and agitation, and the other discoveries, were against him. The same afternoon Mr Arthurlie and his wife came to town by express; and then I got from them the surprising intelligence that the keys of the safe were always kept secreted in a little niche in a wooden cupboard exactly opposite the press containing the safe. This precaution had been taken through the keys once having been lost by being carried about, thus necessitating the fitting on of a new lock on the safe. Until I saw the hiding-place I thought this arrangement one of the most foolhardy imaginable; but when I went out to the house I found that the nail on which the keys were usually hung was in a place the last that an ordinary thief would have looked to. It was in behind the hinge of the door of a wooden press or wine rack. You had to open first the door of the press, then grope in behind the left-hand door and get the keys. No one knew of this place but the tablemaid and the housekeeper. The Arthurlies kept no man-servant. They were positive that the old gardener, Abercorn, did not know of the keys being thus hid in the place, though they admitted that he might have discovered them if he had exerted himself to search. I had found the keys of the safe lying on the floor of the pantry under some of the discarded plated articles, so it was certain that the thief had not only searched for the keys but found them and used them. I began to