you into a bit of my confidence. Come downstairs to the smoking-room, and we'll have these windows opened—this room's got a bit stuffy."
He rang the bell and gave some orders about ventilating the room and about having some light supper laid there for eleven o'clock that evening (in readiness, he said in an aside to me, for our return from the play), and then led me down to a quiet corner of the smoking-room. And there, having first lighted another cigar, he proceeded to divest the copper box of the neat wrappings in which Madrasia had carried it from Kelpieshaw. He set it on the little table before us, and we both stared at it. He, in particular, stared at it so hard that I began to think the mere sight of the thing was hypnotising him. Suddenly he started, and began to fumble in his waistcoat pocket.
"Aye," he muttered, more to himself than to me. "I shouldn't wonder if it is so!"
With that he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a tiny foot-rule, ivory, in folding sections, and, opening the copper box, measured its interior depth. Then he measured the
