while I had my gaze fixed on the man who had lain down on the bedstead for a longer and deeper sleep than he had ever experienced in one before.

"Excuse me for a minute," said my friend, as he crossed over to the opposite arcade; and I saw him pacing down it with measured step. When he came back he did the same with the one in which I stood.

"These two verandahs should be the same length," he said to me. "Yes," I said, "they occupy the two sides of a square. Even in a parallelogram the opposite sides are equal."

'Precisely so; but by the measurements I have just made, this verandah is fifteen feet shorter than the other one. Just wait here a second," and he walked to the gateway and then through it into the street. When he came back, he walked up to the end of the arcade next the gateway and examined it closely.

"This end has been walled up," he said; come and look at the space there is between this inside wall and the wall outside in the street. They would never have a solid wall of that thickness. There would be no object in it here. I am sure that there was an arch like those along the outside of the verandah across this end of it, and that it has been bricked up, and the joining of the wall and arch carefully concealed. It would be at the level of the other ones. If you will give me a back, I will soon find out."

I leaned against the wall as we used to do when we played " Buck! buck! how many fingers do I hold up" at school, and my friend mounted up and began to scrape away the plaster with his pocket-knife.

"Just as I thought," he exclaimed, as he slipped down again. "There is no doubt about it. Do you mind doing a bit of digging?" "No," I said, "but what are we to dig with?"

"This is provoking!" he cried; "the orderly has taken away the pickaxe with him. If we leave this place for an hour, some one else may discover it; and now that I have scraped the plaster away, the bricking up is easily seen. And if anyone else begins the digging, we cannot interrupt them in it. It would then be their claim, as they call it in the gold fields."

66

"There is the sepoy's bayonet," I said ; we could dig a hole in a wall with that."

"Of course we could;" and he got it and we set to work. At first the work was slow and difficult. We could do no more than pick out the mortar, which luckily had scarcely set, from the joints betweer the bricks. But at last we managed to get out a brick. The work became more rapid then. At last the bayonet gave a sudden slip, showing that it had pierced through the wall. And now the hollow sound of the mortar and brickbats falling on the other side of the wall showed that there was a chamber behind it. There must be something worth hiding there, and now we went to work with coats off. At the end of an hour's work we had made a good-sized hole. "Will you go in and

see what there is," said my friend, I being slight and slender and he a portly man. I did so; and crawled out again, sick and dizzy from the foul air within. "We must make the hole bigger," said my friend, "and you had better go out into the open air for a few minutes."

When the hole or opening had been made as large as a small casement window, we waited for some time longer to let the foul air come out and the fresh air enter, and then we went in together. There were two or three large and roughly-made chests, or rather cases, for they were evidently made simply to hold their contents, and not secure them. We soon had the covers off these, and found them full of handsome shawls, and scarves, and pieces of silk, and kincob. There were beautiful suits of women's clothes-the full trousers, and the little bodice, and the long flowing sheet to throw over the head-of very fine silk, thickly embroidered with gold and silver. The collection of articles was a very miscellaneous one, for in one chest were several very handsome richly embroidered sword-belts and horse trappings. While we were hard at work we heard a chuckle at the opening in the wall, and looking up saw the glitter of a pair of eyes and the gleam of a long row of teeth. My friend immediately jumped out, with the bayonet in his hand. The inlooker was probably one of our own followers; but in times like those you could not very much trust anyone, and the sight of plunder might lead to our being disposed of, if taken at disadvantage, in such a lonely place. The man turned out to be one of our Sikh soldiers; good fighters but keen plunderers. Love of military employment, a desire to pay off old scores against the sepoys who had helped to break their power and conquer their country, had been the chief reasons that had led to their flocking to our standard at that time: but the hope of loot had been an equally strong one. They had looked forward to the plunder of Delhi, and had not been disappointed in their expectations. It was they, of all the soldiery, who had made the best use of the first few days of permitted plunder. This man was a very fine specimen of the race; tall, lean, lithe, keen-eyed, with a hooked nose and a peaked beard. His eyes glistened as he looked at the hole, and his lips kept parted with a smile or grin. Here was a scene he loved; here was congenial work.

"We must get rid of this fellow," said my friend; "give me out that shawl and that sword-belt."

I handed these out to him, and he gave them to the Sikh. The man's face beamed as he took the sword-belt: it was very handsome, and no doubt valuable, too, from the amount of bullion on it: it was just what he wanted. He made a salute and walked away.

"I was very anxious to get rid of the man," said my companion, as he entered the chamber again, "because I do not think, as he did I could see, that these shawls and things are all that are in here. I am sure that they must have had some valuable things in this house, from the look of it."

So he took one of the silver-covered maces, of which there were several in one corner, and began to sound the floor carefully and systematically. In one corner it sounded hollow. He stooped down and scraped away the mud, and lo! there presented itself to us a large circular stone, with an iron ring at the top. To me—a young lad then -the breaking into the chamber had been exciting enough, a great adventure. Now my excitement rose to fever point. Here was probably the entrance to long underground galleries, such as those which Aladdin got into in the Arabian Nights, in which stood the trees on whose branches hung rubies and emeralds, and pearls and diamonds, and great sapphires Visions rose before me of a house of my own, in England; perhaps a deer-park; horses and hunters, and a moor in Scotland. But when we got the stone up, after some exertion of strength and trouble, it showed no winding staircase leading down to an underground treasure-house.

There was nothing but a small circular pit, about three feet deep, lined and paved with masonry. But in this were several wooden boxes, and small copper boxes with pierced sides and top, in which was a large quantity of jewelry, rolled up in little pieces of cloth, or put away in

cotton.

Here were thick bangles of solid gold and solid silver; here were rings for the fingers and rings for the toes; ear-rings and nose-rings; gold and silver chains for the neck; silver chains to wear round the waist; necklaces of many kinds, some to wear close round the neck and some that hung far down on the breast. But alas! even here was disappointment. Very few of the precious stones that had ornamented the jewelry had been left behind. They had been picked out and carried away! Here were heaps of rings tied together in bunches with silk-thread, but all the most valuable stones had been removed from them. It was sad to see the great holes in the solid gold hoops, and think that they had held big emeralds and diamonds which might have been ours. However, we poured all the jewelry into a small silk scarf, and made a bundle of it. We also made a bundle of the best shawls and other articles, and then we departed with our loot.

"We will take these to the prize agents at once," said my friend; 66 we will then come back with some of their men and take away all the other things."

Just as we were passing out under the gateway my friend exclaimed suddenly" I see it all! the cunning old fox! He was not forgotten at all. He was left behind on purpose to guard the treasure. They knew that it was not likely that anyone would hurt so old and feeble a man; that hiding himself was all humbug. How well he acted-the cunning old fox! Did you hear what happened in another place like this? Iwent into it too. There was a grave in the middle of the courtyard, covered with a velvet pall and flowers, and with lights burning at the head-after the usual Mahomedan fashion, you know. A young woman sat by

the side of the grave, weeping and wailing. She was the dead man's wife. We might ransack the house, and take all that was in it, but she begged that she might be left to watch by the grave of her beloved husband until permission could be got to remove his body to the graveyard without the walls. He had died suddenly during the days of the assault, and they had been afraid to carry out the body then, and had laid it in this grave in the courtyard. And the poor young thing wept piteously under her veil. We could nct see her face, of course, but from the figure and the voice we knew that she must be a very young girl. She begged to be left there with the venerable old man, an aged retainer, a very counterpart of this other old scoundrel, who had remained behind with her. And she cried as if her heart would break. Of course we said that she might remain; and in fact, being interested in her, said that we would get the permission of the commanding officer for the relations to come and remove the body as soon as they could. They seemed very anxious to do this, for they came the very next day and carried away the beloved one's dust. Then it came out that no one had died or been buried there at all. The whole thing was a ruse. And there at our very feet, in the hole by the side of which the poor widow lay weeping, had been lying hidden a mass of precious stones and valuable jewels, worth thousands of pounds."

We got the whole of our discovered treasure down to the offices of the prize agents. Though we had not made as great a haul as we at one moment expected, yet it was not a bad morning's work; it was not a bad bit of loot.

This story really is a true one, so far as anything that is related can be true.

R. E. F.

Love the Debt.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LORD CHARLECOTE.

ADY SADDLETHWAITE of course did not expect that the match she planned for the far future would be directly advanced during their continental tour. She would be the last person to credit any girl with such callous inconstancy, Mabel least of all. But she did think, and had every right to think, that a heart so harrowed as hers, like a soil in which every green thing has been torn up by the plough, was in the best state for the sowing of the seed of future love. It could not remain for ever in bare, black and bleak desolation, and the first seed sown now in this cleared, softened, and impressionable soil, I would have the best chance of ripening hereafter. Nor, again, did she think it to Lawley's disadvantage that he should be associated inseparably with George in the mind of Mabel; with his death as well as with his life. It is true that

The first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remembered tolling a departed friend-

that is, when this unwelcome news is our sole association with its herald. But when the herald shares the sorrow he announces, and helps by sympathy to heal the wound he makes, his image is more likely to be associated with love than grief.

On the whole, we think Lady Saddlethwaite showed some knowledge of human nature, and of woman's nature, in considering that when