ustice, all
honesty, all sense of right and wrong, would be best served by the
everlasting concealment of such a document. Why should he tell of its
hiding-place? Let them who wanted it search for it, and find it if
they could. Was he not doing much in the cause of honesty in that he
did not destroy it, as would be so easy for him?

But, if left there, would it not certainly be found? Though it should
remain week after week, month after month,--even should it remain
year after year, would it not certainly be found at last, and brought
out to prove that Llanfeare was not his own? Of what use to him would
be the property,--of what service;--how would it contribute to his
happiness or his welfare, knowing, as he would know, that a casual
accident, almost sure to happen sooner or later, might rob him of it
for ever? His imagination was strong enough to depict the misery to
him which such a state of things would produce. How he would quiver
when any stray visitor might enter the room! How terrified he would
be at the chance assiduity of a housemaid! How should he act if the
religious instincts of some future wife should teach her to follow
out that reading which his uncle had cultivated?

He had more than once resolved that he would be mad were he to leave
the document where he found it. He must make it known to those who
were searching for it,--or he must destroy it. His common sense
told him that one alternative or the other must be chosen. He could
certainly destroy it, and no one would be the wiser. He could reduce
it, in the solitude of his chamber, into almost impalpable ashes, and
then swallow them. He felt that, let suspicion come as it might into
the minds of men, let Apjohn, and Powell, and the farmers--let Isabel
herself--think what they might, no one would dare to accuse him of
such a deed. Let them accuse him as they might, there would be no
tittle of evidence against him.

But he could not do it. The more he thought of it, the more he had to
acknowledge that he was incapable of executing such a deed. To burn
the morsel of paper;--oh, how easy! But yet he knew that his hands
would refuse to employ themselves on such a work. He had already
given it up in despair; and, having told himself that it was
impossible, had resolved to extricate the document and, calling
Isabel up from her bed in the middle of the night, to hand it over to
her at once. It would have been easy to say he had opened one book
after anothe