on and so on!--a very
nice collection, Scarterfield, considering that these are only a few
items at random, out of some seventy or eighty altogether. But we can
easily reckon up the total weight--indeed, it's already reckoned up at
the foot of each inventory. At Forestburne, you see, there was a sum
total of two thousand two hundred and thirty-eight ounces of plate; at
Mellerton, one thousand eight hundred and seventy ounces--so these two
inventories represent a mass of about four thousand ounces. Worth
having, Scarterfield!--in either the sixteenth or the twentieth
century."

"And, in the main, it would be--what?" asked Scarterfield. "Gold,
silver?"

"Some of it gold, some silver, a good deal of it silver-gilt," I
replied. "I can tell all that by reading the inventories more
attentively. But I've told you what a mere, cursory glance shows."

"Four thousand ounces of plate--some of it jewelled!" he soliloquised.
"Whew! And what do you make of it, Mr. Middlebrook? I mean--of all
that I've told you?"

"Putting everything together that you've told me," I answered, with
some confidence, "I make this of it. This plate, originally church
property, came--we won't ask how--into the hands of the late Lord
Forestburne, and may have been in possession of his family, hidden
away, perhaps, for four centuries. But at any rate, it was in his
possession, and he deposited it with his bankers across the way. He
may, indeed, not have known what was in it--again, he may have known.
Now I take it that the dishonest temporary manager you told me of
examined those chests, decided to appropriate their valuable contents,
and enlisted the services of Netherfield Baxter in his nefarious
labours. I think that these inventories were found in the chests--one,
probably, in each--and that Baxter kept them out of sheer
curiosity--you say he was a fellow of some education. As for the
plate, I think he and his associate hid it somewhere--and, if you want
my honest opinion, it was for it that Salter Quick was looking."

Scarterfield clapped his hand on the table.

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Hanged if I don't think that myself! It's
my opinion that this Netherfield Baxter, when he hooked it out of
here, got into far regions and strange company, came into touch with
those Quicks and told 'em the secret of this stolen plate--he was, I'm
sure, the Netherfield of that ship the Quicks were on. Yes, sir!--I
think we may safely bet on it that Salter Qui