pening them at the proper time each
morning?"

"No sir."

"One question more--"

But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester's voice recalled
him to himself.

"You are a faithful man," said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
a minute before, "and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?"

"No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
with the utmost care and jealousy."

Mr. Sylvester's voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
discouragement. "The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
they are closed for the night?"

"Yes sir." The janitor's face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
his voice was emphatic.

Mr. Sylvester's eye travelled in the direction of the screen. "Very
well," said he; and paused to reflect.

In the interim the door opened for a second time. "A gentleman to see
Mr. Stuyvesant," said a voice.

With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester's breast.
The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
hastily forward.

"That box has been found unlocked," he cried with a wave of his hand
towards the table; "some one has been to the vaults, and I--Oh, sir," he
hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
to assume, "you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant's box by
mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?"

The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
strangely still in the sile