lore. The window was filled with cheap clocks, and depending from a
steel spring attached to the top of the door was a bell, which rang
when any one entered, for the brothers were working clockmakers,
continually busy in the room at the back of the shop, and trade in the
neighbourhood was not brisk enough to allow them to keep an assistant.
The brothers had worked amicably in this small room for twenty years,
and were reported by the denizens of that quarter of Paris to be
enormously rich. They were certainly contented enough, and had plenty
of money for their frugal wants, as well as for their occasional
exceedingly mild dissipations at the neighbouring cafe. They had always
a little money for the church, and a little money for charity, and no
one had ever heard either of them speak a harsh word to any living
soul, and least of all to each other. When the sensitively adjusted
bell at the door announced the arrival of a possible customer, Adolph
left his work and attended to the shop, while Alphonse continued his
task without interruption. The former was supposed to be the better
business man of the two, while the latter was admittedly the better
workman. They had a room over the shop, and a small kitchen over the
workroom at the back; but only one occupied the bedroom above, the
other sleeping in the shop, as it was supposed that the wares there
displayed must have formed an almost irresistible temptation to any
thief desirous of accumulating a quantity of time-pieces. The brothers
took week-about at guarding the treasures below, but in all the twenty
years no thief had yet disturbed their slumbers.

One evening, just as they were about to close the shop and adjourn
together to the cafe, the bell rang, and Adolph went forward to learn
what was wanted. He found waiting for him an unkempt individual of
appearance so disreputable, that he at once made up his mind that here
at last was the thief for whom they had waited so long in vain. The
man's wild, roving eye, that seemed to search out every corner and
cranny in the place and rest nowhere for longer than a second at a
time, added to Delore's suspicions. The unsavoury visitor was evidently
spying out the land, and Adolph felt certain he would do no business
with him at that particular hour, whatever might happen later.

The customer took from under his coat, after a furtive glance at the
door of the back room, a small paper-covered parcel, and, untying the
string somew