ew of the field of action at
Gleninch followed these characteristic lines of apology.

I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance of the
scene was too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. I saw again,
in the dim evening light, the unsightly mound which had so strangely
attracted my attention at Gleninch. I heard again the words in which
Mr. Playmore had explained to me the custom of the dust-heap in Scotch
country-houses. What had Benjamin and Mr. Playmore done? What had
Benjamin and Mr. Playmore found? For me, the true interest of the
narrative was there--and to that portion of it I eagerly turned next.

They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on the pounds,
shillings, and pence, and the other on the object in view. In Benjamin,
the lawyer had found what he had not met with in me--a sympathetic mind,
alive to the value of "an abstract of the expenses," and conscious of
that most remunerative of human virtues, the virtue of economy.

At so much a week, they had engaged men to dig into the mound and to
sift the ashes. At so much a week, they had hired a tent to shelter
the open dust-heap from wind and weather. At so much a week, they had
engaged the services of a young man (personally known to Benjamin), who
was employed in a laboratory under a professor of chemistry, and who had
distinguished himself by his skillful manipulation of paper in a
recent case of forgery on a well-known London firm. Armed with these
preparations, they had begun the work; Benjamin and the young
chemist living at Gleninch, and taking it in turns to superintend the
proceedings.

Three days of labor with the spade and the sieve produced no results of
the slightest importance. However, the matter was in the hands of two
quietly determined men. They declined to be discouraged. They went on.

On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found.

Upon examination, they proved to be the fragments of a tradesman's
prospectus. Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the young chemist still
persevered. At the end of the day's work more pieces of paper were
turned up. These proved to be covered with written characters.
Mr. Playmore (arriving at Gleninch, as usual, every evening on
the conclusion of his labors in the law) was consulted as to the
handwriting. After careful examination, he declared that the mutilated
portions of sentences submitted to him had been written, beyond all
doubt, by Eustace Macallan's