HIEROGLYPHICA
     A Vegetable Vellum. 
     M.S. & Co.

They all had the same water-mark.  He showed the thing to the Hindoo, who did not understand what it meant.

Then Iris came down again.  Her grandfather was sleeping.  Like a child, he fell asleep the moment his head fell upon the pillow.

“Iris,” he said, “this is no delusion of your grandfather’s.  The parcel has been robbed.”

“How do you know, Arnold?”

“The stupid fellow who stole and opened the packet no doubt thought he was wonderfully clever to fill it up again with paper.  But he forgot that the packet has been lying for eighteen years in the safe, and that this note-paper was made the day before yesterday.”

“How do you know that?”

“You can tell by the look and feel of the paper; they did not make paper like this twenty years ago; besides, look at the water-mark;” he held it to the light, and Iris read the mystic words.  “That is the fashion of to-day.  One house issues a new kind of paper, with a fancy name, and another imitates them.  To-morrow, I will ascertain exactly when this paper was made.”

“But who would steal it, Arnold?  Who could steal it?”

“It would not probably be of the least use to any one.  But it might be stolen in order to sell it back.  We may see an advertisement carefully worded, guarded, or perhaps—­Iris, who had access to the place, when your grandfather was out?”

“No one but James, the shopman.  He has been here five-and-twenty years.  He would not, surely, rob his old master.  No one else comes here except the customers and Cousin Joe.”

“Joe is not, I believe, quite—­”

“Joe is a very bad man.  He has done dreadful things.  But then, even if Joe were bad enough to rob the safe, how could he get at it?  My grandfather never leaves it unlocked.  Oh, Arnold, Arnold, that all this trouble should fall upon us on the very day—­”

“My dear, is it not better that it should fall upon you when I am here, one more added to your advisers?  If you have lost a fortune, I have found one.  Think that you have given it to me.”

“Oh, the fortune may go,” she said.  “The future is ours, and we are young.  But who shall console my grandfather in his old age for his bankruptcy?”

“As the stream,” said Lala Roy, “which passeth from the mountains to the ocean, kisseth every meadow on its way, yet tarries not in any place, so Fortune visits the sons of men; she is unstable as the wind; who shall hold her?  Let not adversity tear off the wings of hope.”

They could do nothing more.  Arnold replaced the paper in the packet, and gave it to Iris; they put back the ledgers and account-books in the safe, and locked it up, and then they went upstairs.

“You shall go to bed, Iris,” said Arnold, “and you, too, Lala Roy.  I shall stay here, in case Mr. Emblem should—­should want anything.”