“I don’t know, miss,” he said feebly, calculating that the sum total of even minimum penalties for the five crimes would outrun his natural life and consume an eternity of reincarnations.

“Of course it wouldn’t be stealing in the ordinary sense,” she explained.  “What I want you to do is to play the part of what we will call a reversible Santa Claus, who takes things away from stupid people who don’t enjoy them anyhow.  And maybe if they lost these things they’d behave themselves.  I could explain afterward that it was all my fault, and of course I wouldn’t let any harm come to you.  I’d be responsible, and of course I’d see you safely out of it; you would have to rely on me for that.  I’m trusting you and you’d have to trust me!”

“Oh, I’d trust ye, miss!  An’ ef I was to get pinched I wouldn’t never squeal on ye.  We don’t never blab on a pal, miss!”

He was afraid she might resent being called a “pal,” but his use of the term apparently pleased her.

“We understand each other, then.  It really won’t be very difficult, for papa’s place is over on the Sound and Mr. Talbot’s is right next to it, so you wouldn’t have far to go.”

Her utter failure to comprehend the enormity of the thing she was proposing affected him queerly.  Even among hardened criminals in the underworld such undertakings are suggested cautiously; but Muriel was ordering a burglary as though it were a pound of butter or a dozen eggs!

“Father keeps his most valuable glazes in a safe in the pantry,” she resumed after a moment’s reflection, “but I can give you the combination.  That will make it a lot easier.”

The Hopper assented, with a pontifical nod, to this sanguine view of the matter.

“Mr. Talbot keeps his finest pieces in a cabinet built into the bookshelves in his library.  It’s on the left side as you stand in the drawing-room door, and you look for the works of Thomas Carlyle.  There’s a dozen or so volumes of Carlyle, only they’re not books,—­not really,—­but just the backs of books painted on the steel of a safe.  And if you press a spring in the upper right-hand corner of the shelf just over these books the whole section swings out.  I suppose you’ve seen that sort of hiding-place for valuables?”

“Well, not exactly, miss.  But havin’ a tip helps, an’ ef there ain’t no soup to pour—­”

“Soup?” inquired Muriel, wrinkling her pretty brows.

“That’s the juice we pour into the cracks of a safe to blow out the lid with,” The Hopper elucidated.  “Ut’s a lot handier ef you’ve got the combination.  Ut usually ain’t jes’ layin’ around.”

“I should hope not!” exclaimed Muriel.

She took a sheet of paper from the leathern stationery rack and fell to scribbling, while he furtively eyed the window and again put from him the thought of flight.

“There!  That’s the combination of papa’s safe.”  She turned her wrist and glanced at her watch.  “It’s half-past eleven and you can catch a trolley in ten minutes that will take you right past papa’s house.  The butler’s an old man who forgets to lock the windows half the time, and there’s one in the conservatory with a broken catch.  I noticed it to-day when I was thinking about stealing the jar myself!”