if you please, that there are figures to guide me on the half-circle of steel.  Figure I. means:  Open once in the four-and-twenty hours.  Figure II. means:  Open twice; and so on to the end.  I set the regulator every morning, after I have read my letters, and when I know what my day’s work is to be.  Would you like to see me set it now?  What is to-day?  Wednesday.  Good!  This is the day of our rifle-club; there is little business to do; I grant a half-holiday.  No work here to-day, after three o’clock.  Let us first put away this portfolio of municipal papers.  There!  No need to trouble Tick-Tick to open the door until eight to-morrow.  Good!  I leave the dial-hand at eight; I put back the regulator to I.; I close the door; and closed the door remains, past all opening by anybody, till to-morrow morning at eight.”

Obenreizer’s quickness instantly saw the means by which he might make the clock-lock betray its master’s confidence, and place its master’s papers at his disposal.

“Stop, sir!” he cried, at the moment when the notary was closing the door.  “Don’t I see something moving among the boxes—­on the floor there?”

(Maitre Voigt turned his back for a moment to look.  In that moment, Obenreizer’s ready hand put the regulator on, from the figure “I.” to the figure “II.”  Unless the notary looked again at the half-circle of steel, the door would open at eight that evening, as well as at eight next morning, and nobody but Obenreizer would know it.)

“There is nothing!” said Maitre Voigt.  “Your troubles have shaken your nerves, my son.  Some shadow thrown by my taper; or some poor little beetle, who lives among the old lawyer’s secrets, running away from the light.  Hark!  I hear your fellow-clerk in the office.  To work! to work! and build to-day the first step that leads to your new fortunes!”

He good-humouredly pushed Obenreizer out before him; extinguished the taper, with a last fond glance at his clock which passed harmlessly over the regulator beneath; and closed the oaken door.

At three, the office was shut up.  The notary and everybody in the notary’s employment, with one exception, went to see the rifle-shooting.  Obenreizer had pleaded that he was not in spirits for a public festival.  Nobody knew what had become of him.  It was believed that he had slipped away for a solitary walk.

The house and offices had been closed but a few minutes, when the door of a shining wardrobe in the notary’s shining room opened, and Obenreizer stopped out.  He walked to a window, unclosed the shutters, satisfied himself that he could escape unseen by way of the garden, turned back into the room, and took his place in the notary’s easy-chair.  He was locked up in the house, and there were five hours to wait before eight o’clock came.

He wore his way through the five hours:  sometimes reading the books and newspapers that lay on the table:  sometimes thinking:  sometimes walking to and fro.  Sunset came on.  He closed the window-shutters before he kindled a light.  The candle lighted, and the time drawing nearer and nearer, he sat, watch in hand, with his eyes on the oaken door.