craned their necks with a quick
movement.

Sawdust!

The coffin was packed to the brim with sawdust, tightly pressed down.
The surface lay smooth, undisturbed, levelled as some hand had levelled
it long years before. They were not in the presence of death, but of
deceit.

Somebody laughed faintly. The sound of the laughter broke the spell.
The chief official present looked round him with a smile.

"It is evident that there were good grounds for suspicion," he
remarked. "Here is no dead body, gentlemen. See if anything lies
beneath the sawdust," he added, turning to the workmen. "Turn it out!"

The workmen began to scoop out the sawdust with their hands; one of
them, evidently desirous of making sure that no body was in the coffin,
thrust down his fingers at various places along its length. He, too,
laughed.

"The coffin's weighted with lead!" he remarked. "See!"

And tearing the sawdust aside, he showed those around him that at three
intervals bars of lead had been tightly wedged into the coffin where
the head, the middle, and the feet of a corpse would have rested.

"Done it cleverly," he remarked, looking round. "You see how these
weights have been adjusted. When a body's laid out in a coffin, you
know, all the weight's in the end where the head and trunk rest. Here
you see the heaviest bar of lead is in the middle; the lightest at the
feet. Clever!"

"Clear out all the sawdust," said some one. "Let's see if there's
anything else."

There was something else. At the bottom of the coffin two bundles of
papers, tied up with pink tape. The legal gentlemen present immediately
manifested great interest in these. So did Spargo, who, pulling Breton
along with him, forced his way to where the officials from the Home
Office and the solicitor sent by the _Watchman_ were hastily examining
their discoveries.

The first bundle of papers opened evidently related to transactions at
Market Milcaster: Spargo caught glimpses of names that were familiar to
him, Mr. Quarterpage's amongst them. He was not at all astonished to
see these things. But he was something more than astonished when, on
the second parcel being opened, a quantity of papers relating to
Cloudhampton and the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit Society were
revealed. He gave a hasty glance at these and drew Breton aside.

"It strikes me we've found a good deal more than we ever bargained
for!" he exclaimed. "Didn't Aylmore say that the real culprit at
Cloudha