e was placed in the small unused
room beside their sleeping chamber. With the box still in his hands
he stole on tiptoe into the room and looked carefully round him.

His brothers were sleeping lightly, looking as though they would be
easily and speedily aroused. But the monk was snoring deeply, and
the bloated face which was turned towards him displayed that
abandonment of repose which bespeaks a very sound and even sottish
slumber.

The boy looked with repulsion at the flushed face, the open mouth,
and dropped jaw. Something in the expression of that sleeping face
filled him with scorn and loathing. No danger of this man's
awakening; his half-drunken sleep was far too heavy and sodden.

Edred stepped lightly across the room towards the chest which he
had had moved the previous evening, and lying at full length along
the floor, he proceeded to shake his box after the manner of a
pepper pot until he had made beneath the chest a soft layer of dust
which looked like the accumulation of weeks. It was deftly and
skilfully done, and although he looked critically at the after
effect, to make sure there was nothing artificial about the aspect,
he could not detect anything amiss.

The next step was to carry away his box, empty it out of a window,
and break in pieces the perforated part, that there might be no
tracing his action in this matter. Then gaining possession of his
handkerchief full of flue, he stole softly back again, and laid
great flakes between the legs of the chest and the wall, stuffed
light fragments into the interstices of the carving, and laid them
upon any projecting ledge that was likely to have caught such light
dirt as it filtered through the air.

A soft movement in the room told him that his brothers were awake
and watching him, though the monk still snored on in his stertorous
fashion. One after the other the pair stole from their beds and
looked for a moment at this skilful travesty of nature's handiwork,
and both nodded in token of approval and congratulation.

Edred had an artist's eye for effect, and did not spoil his
handiwork by overdoing it. The result produced was exactly as if
the chest had stood for some time in its present position, so that
the dust had gathered beneath it and the flue had clung to the wall
behind it. No one looking at its position there could doubt that it
had been there for a period of some weeks.

Satisfied with the result of his manoeuvre, the boy flung away the