The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.  He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when he had gone through them.  Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.  Presently he noticed a more sudden movement:  the young man had found something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if he was observed.  The senior partner and his client were both apparently deep in their own affairs.  In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way that Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon it, and noticed their position.  Murray Bradshaw took another hurried glance at the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper.  He ran it over with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself.  With another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were observed or like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down from the shelves.  In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was, which he had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very silent and as it were stealthy way back in its place.  He then gave a look at each of the other papers, and said to his partner:  “Old bills, old leases, and insurance policies that have run out.  Malachi seems to have kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it.”

“That ’s the way with the old misers, always,” said Mr. Penhallow.

Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,—­or pretending to read it.  He took off his spectacles.

“We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow.”  Then turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,

   “’Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
     Quaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
     Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat’

“You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?”

While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly as if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion.  His old habits as a teacher made that easy.

Murray Bradshaw’s face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on his cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of excitement.

“Something is going on inside there,” the old man said to himself.  He waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up and left the office.  As soon as he and the senior partner were alone, Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library.  There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,—­the fine Elzevir edition of 1664.  It was bound in parchment, and thus readily distinguishable