iring tone.

"None whatever," answered Theodore, playfully. "It won't take you half
an hour, sir, and you know it is a very important matter, involving not
only ourselves but others."

"True," said Mr. Stephens, more gravely. "Well, pass them along."

And while Theodore obeyed the order, and appeared engrossed in the
papers, he was really watching that closet door. It certainly moved,
very slightly and noiselessly, and it certainly was not the wind, for
the wind had no eyes, and at least one very sharp eye was distinctly
discernible in the mirror, peering out at them from that door! The owner
of the eyes seemed to have forgotten the long mirror, and Theodore's
convenient position for seeing what passed behind him. Whose eye was it?
and why was the possessor of it shut up in that closet? Theodore
watched it stealthily and sharply. It grew bolder, and the door was
pushed open a little more, a _very_ little, just enough to reveal the
shape of the forehead and a few curls of black hair. Then suspicion
became certainty--they belonged to the young man whom he had disliked
and distrusted since the day in which he had first entered the employ of
Mr. Stephens, six months before. Very strange and just a little
unreasonable had seemed his distrust. Mr. Stephens had tried sober
argument and good-humored raillery by turns to convince his confidential
clerk that he was prejudiced. All to no purpose. Theodore could give no
tangible reasons for his unwavering opinion; but his early living by his
wits, among all sorts of people, had so sharpened his ideas that he felt
almost hopelessly certain that a villain was being harbored among them.
Now while he tried to answer coherently Mr. Stephens' questions, he was
thinking hard and nervously what was to be done. What was the man's
object in hiding at midnight in his employer's house? Was Mr. Stephens'
life in danger? Was the man a murderer, or simply a thief? What did he
know of their private affairs? What had Mr. Stephens in his house that
proved a special temptation? How should he get all these questions
answered? The hot blood surged to his very temples as he remembered Mr.
Stephens' departure from the store that very afternoon with twenty
thousand dollars for deposit. What if for some reason the deposit had
not been made, and was still in Mr. Stephens' possession--in this very
room perhaps! He remembered with a shiver that the young man in question
was in the private office during the