woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited--I learned that he had once had the
very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
for the day, he couldn't stir from his bed, or at least thought he
couldn't. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
returned a quite eager, 'yes,' being a naturally vain woman and moreover
a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
any of his secrets. 'Then,' said he, 'listen to those three numbers that
I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,' explaining the matter in a
way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
nutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
paper in his wife's hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors."

"H