ten to her? We were both going the same way. Of course, I should
hear a good roundabout story--a second edition of her father's rigmarole
which had prejudiced the magistrate against him--but I was not bound in
any way to believe a word that she said.

It sounded uncommonly like truth though, and took me very much aback
when she said suddenly--

"Yes, that clock was stolen from you. We knew it was stolen--and who
stole it."

"But you just said----"

"That my father did not steal it. God bless him, no. He did not
know--did not dream that we knew--did not know anything about it in any
way--does not to this day. It was his property, he thought--all that was
left of any value in the world to him; and it had belonged to his
son--his eldest son, my half-brother, who----"

"Who was the thief. The infernal----"

"Please don't, sir. He is dead."

"Oh! I beg your pardon. I didn't--know," I found myself saying in an
apologetic manner which really surprised myself.

"Yes, sir, he was the thief," she said, sinking her voice into a whisper
almost. "He committed suicide two months ago abroad, but we have kept
the truth back from father. He wasn't to know--it would have broken his
heart, he was so proud of his son, always. But before my half-brother
died--he had gone to Canada, to make a home for Kitty and her boy, he
said--he wrote to Kitty that he was a repentant man, and that, unknown
to any of us, he had been for years in bad hands, working with them,
stealing with them. Our poor father thought he was a traveller for a
Manchester firm, and so did we, until that terrible confession came
across the sea to us. We were not to tell father--we were to make all
the restitution that we could presently; he would send full instructions
what we were to do by the next mail, he wrote, and the next mail only
told us of his death."

[Illustration: "I WAS ALWAYS HANDY WITH MY FINGERS."]

"And your father?"

"Kitty and I have fought hard to keep the truth from him--the truth
would have broken his heart. Why the news of his son's death nearly
did, sir. And he has had so much trouble--so many losses too--and we
have been for the last six months so very hard driven to live. Of late
days father wished to sell this clock, but we would not let him--we were
sure it had been stolen, and we hoped to find the owner some day."

"But not like this, I suppose?"

"Oh! no, not like this. But when little Willie got very ill; when
residence abroad f