the plantation. How came you to lay your
lucky hands on Screw? " he continued, when
we had passed through the iron door, and
had closed it after us.

"Tell me first, how the doctor managed to
make a hole in the floor just in the nick of
time."

"What! did you see the trap sprung?"

"I saw everything through the hole in
the wall."

"The devil you did! Had you any notion
that signals were going on, all the while
you were on the watch ? We have a
regular set of them in case of
accidents. It's a rule that father, and me, and
the doctor are never to be in the workroom
together—so as to keep one of us always at
liberty to act on the signals.—Where are you
going to ?"

"Only to get the gardener's ladder, to help
us over the wall. Go on."

"The first signal is a private bell—that
means, Listen at the pipe. The next is a
call down the pipe for ' Moses,'—that means,
Danger! Lock the door. ' Stilton Cheese,'
means, Put the mare to; and ' Old Madeira,'
Stand by the trap. The trap works in that
locked up room you never got into; and
when our hands are on the machinery,
we are awkward enough to have a little
accident with the luncheon tray. ' Quite
Ready,' is the signal to lower the trap, which
we do in the regular theatre-fashion. We
lowered the doctor smartly enough, as you
saw, and got out by the back staircase.
Father went in the gig, and I let them out
and locked the gates after them. Now you
know as much as I've got breath to tell
you."

We scaled the wall easily by the help of
the ladder. When we were down on the
other side, Young File suggested that the
safest course for us was to separate, and for
each to take his own way. We shook hands
and parted. He went Southward, towards
London, and I went Westward, towards the
sea-coast, with Dr. Knapton's precious
writing-desk safe under my arm.

For a couple of hours I walked on briskly,
careless in what direction I went, so long as
I kept my back turned on Barkingham. By
the time I had put ten miles of ground,
according to my calculations, between me and
the red brick house, I began to look upon the
doctor's writing-desk rather in the light of
an incumbrance, and determined to examine
it without further delay. Accordingly I picked
up the first large stone I could find in the
road, crossed a common, burst through a
hedge, and came to a halt, on the other side,
in a thick plantation. Here, finding myself
well screened from public view, I broke open
the desk with the help of the stone, and
began to look over the contents.

To my unspeakable disappointment I found
but few papers of any kind to examine. The
desk was beautifully fitted with, all the necessary
materials for keeping up a large
correspondence; but there were not more than
half a dozen letters in it altogether. Four
were on business-matters, and the other two
were of a friendly nature, referring to persons
and things in which I did not feel the smallest
interest. I found besides half a dozen bills
receipted (the doctor was a mirror of punctuality
in the payment of tradesmen), note
and letter-paper of the finest quality, clarified
pens, a pretty little pin-cushion, two
small account-books filled with the neatest
entries, and some leaves of blotting-paper.
Nothing else; absolutely nothing else, in
the treacherous writing-desk on which I had
implicitly relied to guide me to Laura's
hiding-place.

I groaned in sheer wretchedness over the
destruction of all my dearest plans and hopes.
If the Bow Street runners had come into the
plantation just as I had completed the rifling
of the desk, I think I should have let them
take me without making the slightest effort
at escape. As it was, no living soul appeared
within sight of me. I must have sat at the
foot of a tree for full half an hour, with the
doctor's useless bills and letters before me,
with my head in my hands, and with all my
energies of body and mind utterly crushed
down by despair. At the end of the half-
hour, the natural restlessness of my faculties
began to make itself felt. Whatever may be
said about it in books, no emotion in this
world ever did, or ever will, last for long
together. The strong feeling may return over
and over again; but it must have its constant
intervals of change or repose. In real life
the bitterest grief doggedly takes its rest and
dries its eyes; the heaviest despair sinks to a
certain level, and stops there to give hope a
chance of rising, in spite of us. Even the joy
of an unexpected meeting is always an
imperfect sensation, for it never lasts long
enough to justify our secret anticipations—our
happiness dwindles to mere every-day
contentment before we have half done with it.

I raised my head, and gathered the bills
and letters together, and stood up a man
again, wondering at the variableness of my
own temper, at the curious elasticity of that
toughest of all the vital substances within
us, which we call Hope. "Sitting and sighing
at the foot of this tree," thought I, " is not
the way to find Laura, or to secure my own
safety. Let me circulate my blood and rouse
my ingenuity, by taking to the road again."
However, before I forced my way back to
the open side of the hedge, I thought it
desirable to tear up the bills and letters, for
fear of being traced by them if they were
found in the plantation. The desk I left
where it was, there being no name on it. The
note-paper and pens I pocketed—forlorn as
my situation was, it did not authorise me to
waste stationery. The blotting-paper was the
last thing left to dispose of: two neatly-
folded sheets, quite clean, except in one place,