He was convinced that the secret must be
hidden there, and after in vain endeavoring to find a spring, he took
a poker and hammered it, and as it bent a spring gave way, and showed a
very shallow false bottom.

In this was a thin gold coin, evidently of considerable antiquity, and a
small piece of paper, on which was written the word "Masulipatam." John
Thorndyke looked at it in bewilderment; that it was connected with the
secret he felt certain, but alone it was absolutely useless. Doubtless
his brother had intended to give him the key of the riddle, when he had
so desperately striven to speak. After in vain thinking the matter over
he said:

"Well, thank goodness; there is nothing to be done about the matter for
another thirteen or fourteen years; it is of no use worrying about it
now." He went to an old fashioned cabinet, and placed the coin and piece
of paper in a very cunningly devised secret drawer. The next morning
he went out into the garden and dropped the battered snuffbox into the
well, and then dismissed the subject from his mind.

CHAPTER II

Standing some two miles out of Reigate is the village of Crowswood, a
quiet place and fairly well to do, thanks in no small degree to Squire
Thorndyke, who owned the whole of the parish, and by whom and his
tenants the greater portion of the village were employed. Greatly had
the closing of the Manor House, after the death of old Squire Thorndyke,
been felt. There were no more jellies, soups, and other comforts to
be looked for in time of sickness, no abatement of rent when the
breadwinner was sick or disabled, no check to the drunkards, whom the
knowledge that they would be turned out of their cottage at a week's
notice kept in some sort of order. When, therefore, after ten years
of absence of all government, John Thorndyke, after the death of his
brother, the Colonel, came down and took possession, he found the place
sadly changed from what it had been when he had left it twenty years
before. His first act was to dismiss Newman; who, completely unchecked,
had, he found, been sadly mismanaging affairs. It was not long, however,
before his hand made itself felt. Two out of the three public houses
were shut up in six months, a score of their habitual frequenters had,
weeks before, been turned out of their houses, an order had been issued
that unless a cottage was kept in good order and the garden bright and
blooming with flowers in the summer a fresh tenant