"But if the late Mr. Gabriel Monk was a miser, what became of his savings?" "Ah!" said Mrs. Gilfin, significantly, "now you're growing hot, Master Cyrus, as the children say. The will left the money and the property to Mr. Walter Monk, and the savings--he didn't mention the amount--to Miss Gertrude with her uncle's dear love. But search as they might, they could not find out where the money was hidden. And as Mr. Miser Monk saved nearly five hundred a year for eighty years more or less, he must have hidden away a heap of gold. Forty thousand pounds I daresay," ended Mrs. Gilfin with relish. "Or fifty thousand," I mused, recalling the sum mentioned by the gardener, and beginning to see light. "Have they searched everywhere?" "Everywhere," echoed Mrs. Gilfin, nodding again. "Miss Gertrude's an innocent, who believes that her pa's an angel, which he ain't, though nice enough in his ways. She'd give him her head if he asked her and never complains of him keeping her short and being always away spending his five hundred a year. He knew if he found his brother's savings--forty thousand pounds, I'm certain," added Mrs. Gilfin decidedly, "that, though lawfully Miss Gertrude's, she'd hand them over to him. So he turned the house upside down, and even dug up the garden, to say nothing of searching the meadows. He wanted the spending of the money, you see, Master Cyrus. But they couldn't find even as much as a shilling. What's become of all the money, no one knows, unless Mr. Miser Monk gambled and lost. He certainly went up to London every now and then," mused the landlady, "and them old men can't be trusted any more than the young ones, saving your presence, Master Cyrus, But there it is, sir," she spread out her pudgy hands and shrugged her fat shoulders, "plenty of money, belonging to that poor young lady hidden away, and she with scarcely enough to dress on, let alone keep the bread in her mouth, though to be sure she hasn't got to pay rent, and her pa gives the servant her wages regular. Ah," Mrs. Gilfin sighed, "and such a beauty. I wonder she ain't been married ages ago." "Does her father love her?" "Yes and no. He loves her when she don't cross his path, and thinks her a bother when she do. Some times he takes her to London for a treat, being free with his money, when he spends it on himself. He got her picture taken by a swell photographer once, but I daresay that was to show her to one of his rich friends and get her married off well, so that he could live on his son-in-law." "That must have been one of the photographs I saw on the mantlepiece in the Mootley corner shop," I exclaimed.