substitutions.

"Listen, Robert," said Raikes with laborious amiability, as his
astonished nephew seated himself near the bedside, "it has been my
purpose to conceal this hiding place from any living soul, but I find
that I have not succeeded.

"Some one has made three visits to that recess and helped himself to as
many bags of coin."

Robert, remembering his uncle's well-known secrecy and the unusual
precautions taken by him to secure his room from intrusion, looked his
incredulity, which stimulated Raikes into exclaiming:

"Ah, but you do not know how incredible it is. Wait until you hear all.
You will wonder what human agency could penetrate these locks, open the
doors of this hiding place, extract the plunder, restore the locks to
their original condition, and re-issue into the passageway without
disturbing the latches or the crossbar. My losses are supernatural. Now
follow me carefully and confess that you have not heard anything so
ghastly, so unreal as what I am about to relate."

As Raikes proceeded in his narrative, his nephew was at first inclined
to receive these weird confidences as features of the unhappy man's
condition, but as the latter progressed, with a constantly increasing
degree of his customary emotionless lucidity, his sincerity became
apparent.

"And now," concluded Raikes, "what have you to say to all this? Is it
not worthy of a Poe or a Maupassant? I tell you, I must have some
explanation of this mystery or I shall go mad."

During this singular recital the young man's mind, stimulated by the
eerie perplexities and the unhappy denouement, had been busy.

It was not difficult to convince himself of the futility of any of his
own speculations; the nearness of the calamity affected him, in a
degree, as it did the withered invalid.

He had a sound brain, nourished by a well sustained body; his
intelligence was apt and rapid, but these unheard-of complications
demanded a morbid analysis of which he was incapable.

On this basis, however, as his uncle had proceeded, Robert had been able
to develop a suggestion; he could offer that, at least.

In reply, therefore, to the feverish questions of his uncle, the young
man said:

"In so far as I am able to see, your disasters have narrowed your range
of discernment. They are too recent; they affect you too nearly. Under
such conditions we take counsel of our prejudices instead of our
judgment. Your thoughts are apt to return to the central fe