Otherwise, Trevethick was not one to keep a hoard in his house for the mere pleasure of gloating over it.  He had not looked into his strong-box for months, nor would he have done so now, but for this unexpected demand upon it.  It was safe enough, he knew, in his daughter’s room; and as for its having been opened, that was an impossibility; the padlock hung in front of it as usual, and it would have taken a man half a lifetime to have hit upon its open sesame by trial.  He was justly proud of that letter lock, which was his own contrivance, invented when he was quite a young man, and had been perforce compelled to turn his attention to mechanics, and he considered it a marvel of skill.  It was characteristic in him that he had never revealed its secret even to his daughter.  Indeed, with the exception of Harry, nobody at Gethin—­save, perhaps, Hannah, when she dusted her young mistress’s room—­had ever set eyes upon it, nor, if they had, would they have understood its meaning.

It was therefore without the slightest suspicion of its having been tampered with, that, an hour or two after the conversation just narrated, Trevethick repaired to his strong-box, with the intention of taking from it the sum of money required by Solomon.  The padlock was like a little clock, except that it had the letters of the alphabet round its face instead of figures, and three hands instead of two; this latter circumstance insured, by its complication, the safety of the treasure, but at the same time rendered it useless—­unless he broke the box open—­to the possessor himself if by any accident he should forget the letter time at which he had set it; and accordingly Trevethick was accustomed to carry a memorandum of this about with him; even if he lost it, it would be no great matter, for what meaning would it convey to any human being to find a bit of paper with the letters B, N, Z upon it?  Harry, as we have said, was out of the house, so his daughter’s room was untenanted.  He went to a cupboard, and took down the box from its usual shelf, with the same feeling of satisfaction that an old poet recurs to his first volume of verse; he may have written better things, and things that have brought him more money, but those spring leaves are dearest to him of all.  So it was with Trevethick’s spring lock.  He adjusted the hands, and the padlock sprang open; he lifted the lid, and the box was empty; the two thousand pounds in Bank of England notes were gone.

He was a big bull-necked man, of what is called (in the reports of inquests) “a full habit of body,” and the discovery was almost fatal to him.  His face grew purple, the veins in his forehead stood out, and his well-seasoned head, which liquor could so little affect, went round and round with him, and sang like a humming-top.  He was on the very brink of a fit, which might have “annihilated space and time” (as far as he was concerned), “and made two lovers happy.”  But the star of Richard Yorke was not in the ascendant.  The old