to the last few sentences which remained to be
read. They began thus:--

"Before I say anything in conclusion, of the sale of our business, of
my brother's death, and of the life which I have been leading since that
time, I should wish to refer, once for all, and very briefly, to the
few things which my niece left behind her, when she abandoned her home.
Circumstances may, one day, render this necessary. I desire then to
state, that everything belonging to her is preserved in one of her boxes
(now in my possession), just as she left it. When the letters signed
'A. C.' were discovered, as I have mentioned, on the occasion of repairs
being made in the house, I threw them into the box with my own hand.
They will all be found, more or less, to prove the justice of
those first suspicions of mine, which my late brother so unhappily
disregarded. In reference to money or valuables, I have only to mention
that my niece took all her savings with her in her flight. I knew in
what box she kept them, and I saw that box open and empty on her
table, when I first discovered that she was gone. As for the only three
articles of jewelry that she had, her brooch I myself saw her give to
Ellen Gough--her earrings she always wore--and I can only presume (never
having found it anywhere) that she took with her, in her flight, her
Hair Bracelet."

"There it is again!" cried Mat, dropping the letter in astonishment, the
instant those two significant words, "Hair Bracelet," caught his eye.

He had hardly uttered the exclamation, before he heard the door of the
house flung open, then shut to again with a bang. Zack had just let
himself in with his latch-key.

"I'm glad he's come," muttered Mat, snatching up the letter from the
floor, and crumpling it into his pocket. "There's another thing or two
I want to find out, before I go any further--and Zack's the lad to help
me."

CHAPTER IX. MORE DISCOVERIES.

When Zack entered the room, and saw his strange friend, with legs
crossed and hands in pockets, sitting gravely in the usual corner,
on the floor, between a brandy-bottle on one side, and a guttering,
unsnuffed candle on the other, he roared with laughter, and stamped
about in his usual boisterous way, till the flimsy little house seemed
to be trembling under him to its very foundations. Mat bore all this
noise and ridicule, and all the jesting that followed it about the
futility of drowning his passion for Madonna in the brandy-bot