open, and he looked in. A strange man was sitting in the outer shop, a
pipe in his mouth, and James was leaning his head upon his hands, with
wild and haggard eyes gazing straight before him.

"Poor devil," murmured Joseph. "I feel for him, I do indeed. He had
the key made--for himself; he certainly let me use it once, but only
once, and who's to prove it? And he's had the opportunity every day of
using it himself. That's very awkward, Foxy, my boy. If I were Foxy, I
should be in a funk, myself."

He strolled away, thinking that all promised well. Lotty most
favorably and unsuspiciously received in her new character; no one
knowing the contents of the packet; his grandfather gone silly; and
for himself, he had had the opportunity of advising exactly what he
wished to be done--namely, that silence and inaction should be
observed for a space, in order to give the holders of the property a
chance of offering terms. What better advice could he give? And what
line of action would be better or safer for himself?

If James had known who was in the house-passage, the other side of the
door, there would, I think, have been a collision of two solid bodies.
But he did not know, and presently Lala Roy came back, and the torture
began again. James took down books and put them up again; he moved
about feverishly, doing nothing, with a duster in his hand; but all
the time he felt those deep accusing eyes upon him with a silence
worse than a thousand questions. He knew--he was perfectly
certain--that he should be found out. And all the trouble for nothing!
and the Bailiff's man in possession, and the safe robbed, and those
eyes upon him, saying, as plain as eyes could speak, "Thou art the
Man!"

"And Joe is the man," said James; "not me at all. What I did was
wrong, but I was tempted. Oh, what a precious liar and villain he is!
And what a fool I've been!"

The day passed more slowly than it seemed possible for any day to
pass; always the man in the shop; always the deep eyes of the silent
Hindoo upon him. It was a relief when, once, Mr. Chalker looked in and
surveyed the shelves with a suspicious air, and asked if the old man
had by this time listened to reason.

It is the business of him who makes plunder out of other men's
distresses--as the jackal feeds upon the offal and the putrid
carcass--to know as exactly as he can how his fellow-creatures are
situated. For this reason such a one doth diligently inquire, listen,
pick u