then, if you wish to serve me."

I sped rapidly down-stairs, and entered the dining-room so noiselessly
that old Morton, who was a "little thick of hearing," did not hear my
steps nor move from his position by the fire, where he sat apparently
absorbed by his newspapers. "Morton," I said, and laid my quivering hand
upon his arm, "the time has come to act. Come help me to secure my
treasure." He rose silently to obey me.

I touched the spring of the mirror; it swung silently open, and revealed
to the astonished old man a square niche built in the wall--unsuspected
before by him--in which fitted an iron chest, the existence of which he
had never dreamed of until now. But the contents were gone--gone since
yesterday! The chest was empty, with its lid propped open. There was not
even a paper within.

With a bitter groan I tottered back against the wall, while the cold dew
stood on my brow, and my limbs trembled under me. This was indeed
despair!

"What ails you, Miss Miriam?" he asked, with an expression of anguish
upon his kind, old, quivering face. "Do you miss any thing--what have
you lost, Miss Miriam?"

"You left your post, Morton," I said, at last, "and this is the
consequence--I have lost every thing! Old man! old friend! did you
think I charged you to watch every one who came, so earnestly, to stay
here so constantly, without a good and sufficient reason? Some one has
been here before us--my gold is gone! we are ruined, Morton!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Whatever my flash of conviction might have been, all suspicions against
Evelyn must have been allayed by the manner in which she received the
information of the loss of the deposits behind the mirror.

Her shrieks filled the house; another physician was hastily summoned in
Dr. Craig's absence, who gave her disease or seizure a Latin name--wrote
a Greek or Hebrew prescription--or something equally unintelligible, and
vanished ghost-like, in the manner most approved of by modern
practitioners.

There was no hard epithet that Evelyn did not apply to Mr. Basil
Bainrothe during her hysterical mania, and before the doctor's arrival;
but, on her recovery, she begged me to repeat nothing of the sort, if
she had been indiscreet enough to let out her true opinion of him and
his measures, in a moment of irrepressible emotion. "For," she pursued,
"it is expedient for us to keep on terms with the man, at least for the
present, and in no way harass or exasperate him--we