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articles under discussion.

It looked dark and gloomy below, but on the manager's striking a wax
match and holding it aloft, they were enabled each one to descend the
short ladder which the opening of the flooring revealed. Beneath the
counting-house Kate found to her amazement a room quite as large as the
one above it, furnished with chairs, a table, and a couple of stout iron
safes. Upon the table stood an old iron candlestick into which Mr.
Wentworth inserted a candle lighted from his wax match.

"You never told me," were Kate's reproachful words, and still more
reproachful glance.

"I tell you now," he said lightly. "There was no need to before. Your
father showed it me when I had been here a year. Indeed, he and I often
forgot that the counting-house had been built for a double purpose,--but
that was because there was nothing to stow away of much value. Now I
think we have just the hiding-place for all that silver."

It was indeed the place, the very place, and under great secrecy the
silver was conveyed through the trap-door, and firmly locked into the
iron safes.

So far so good, and Kate breathed again with almost as much of her old
light-heartedness as before.

In spite of her doubt of the wisdom of bringing such valuables so far
and to such a place, she and Cicely took a secret delight in a weekly
cleaning up of the silver, secure of all observation from outsiders. It
was a pleasure to Kate to lift and polish the handsome epergne, and to
finger the delicate teaspoons and fanciful fish-knives and forks.

"What a haul this would be for a bushranger!" she said one day, as she
carefully laid the admired epergne back into its place in the iron safe.

Cicely gave a gasp and a shudder. "You--you don't have them in these
parts, surely!" she ejaculated.

"If they find there is anything worth lifting they'll visit any
homestead in the colony," returned Kate.

"But oh! dear Kate, what should we do if they came here? I should die of
fright."

"Yes, I'm afraid you would," said Kate, glancing compassionately at the
delicate figure beside her, and at the cheeks which had visibly lost
their pink colour. "No, Cicely, I don't think there is any chance of
such characters visiting us just now. The first and last time I saw a
bushranger was when I was fifteen years old. He and his men tried to
break into our house for, somehow, it had got wind that father had in
the house a large sum of money--money which of cours