for it puzzled me how they would have got the
money, even over my signature, taking into consideration my sudden
disappearance and the to-do there would be about it. But I took care
to say nothing about that. Mr. Lightbody's cheque and the hope that
they had of my signing it, and so enabling them to get the money, was
my best safeguard.

But one day Miss Orrin, apparently after long cogitation, made another
proposal. If I would write to my bankers telling them that I had gone
abroad on an affair of great moment, and asking them to pay to the
bearer a thousand pounds on my behalf, Miss Orrin would pledge her word
to leave me with ten days' provisions in the vault, and at the end of
that time to send to the authorities a message stating where I was to
be found.

This, she said, was their ultimatum. The alternative unexpressed, but
evident, was Master Jeremy's knife. However, I did not agree. The
business had too speculative an air, and there was a decided lack of
guarantee. For there was nothing to prevent those kind friends from
cutting my throat after they had pocketed the cash, supposing that my
banker was fool enough to pay it without going to the police. I
suppose, however, that Jeremy would have stayed here by me, and if the
police had been called in, or his sister had not returned, there would
have been no more of me.

I told them plainly, and as a business man, that they would only be
running their heads into a trap if I wrote any such order, but that the
cheque was negotiable anywhere. It could pass through any number of
hands even from the Continent. This little bit of information, I
believe, preserved my life. For the very next day I caught one of the
jackdaws that came to seek shelter about my dungeon, entering through a
crack high in the arched roof. I wrote the message--already
reproduced--on paper stuffed in a rook's quill which I picked up off
the floor, and fastening the long feather to the jackdaw's tail with
whitey-brown thread unwound from a button, I let the bird flutter away.

Now I come to a circumstance that I have something of delicacy about.
Bairns' plays are not suitable for men of ripe years, you say. I
agree, but when sometimes one has children, and especially an only son
upon whom the care and guidance of a large business will some day
devolve, there are certain kinds of plays that cannot be hastily
condemned even by the wisest.

It was the year when the fever, now called t