A direful thought struck me.  I dashed up-stairs and into my room.  Yes, he did mean my trunk. I could see nothing funny about it—­ quite the contrary.  The bond of sympathy between my nephew and myself was suddenly broken.  Looking at the matter from the comparative distance which a few weeks have placed between that day and this, I can see that I was unable to consider the scene before me with a calm and unprejudiced mind.  I am now satisfied that the sudden birth and hasty decease of my sympathy with Toddie were striking instances of human inconsistency.  My soul had gone out to his because he loved to rummage in trunks, and because I imagined he loved to see the monument of incongruous material which resulted from such an operation; the scene before me showed clearly that I had rightly divined my nephew’s nature.  And yet my selfish instincts hastened to obscure my soul’s vision, and to prevent that joy which should ensue when “Faith is lost in full fruition.”

My trunk had contained nearly everything, for while a campaigner I had learned to reduce packing to an exact science.  Now, had there been an atom of pride in my composition I might have glorified myself, for it certainly seemed as if the heap upon the floor could never have come out of a single trunk.  Clearly, Toddie was more of a general connoisseur than an amateur in packing.  The method of his work I quickly discerned, and the discovery threw some light upon the size of the heap in front of my trunk.  A dress-hat and its case, when their natural relationship is dissolved, occupy nearly twice as much space as before, even if the former contains a blacking-box not usually kept in it, and the latter contains a few cigars soaking in bay rum.  The same might be said of a portable dressing-case and its contents, bought for me in Vienna by a brother ex-soldier, and designed by an old continental campaigner to be perfection itself.  The straps which prevented the cover from falling entirely back had been cut, broken or parted in some way, and in its hollow lay my dresscoat, tightly rolled up.  Snatching it up with a violent exclamation, and unrolling it, there dropped from it—­one of those infernal dolls.  At the same time a howl was sounded from the doorway.

“You tookted my dolly out of her cradle—­I want to wock my dolly—­oo—­oo—­oo—­ee—­ee—­ee—­”

“You young scoundrel,” I screamed—­yes, howled, I was so enraged—­ “I’ve a great mind to cut your throat this minute.  What do you mean by meddling with my trunk?”

“I—­doe—­know.”  Outward turned Toddie’s lower lip; I believe the sight of it would move a Bengal tiger to pity, but no such thought occurred to me just then.

“What made you do it?”

“Be—­cause.”

“Because what?”

“I—­doe—­know.”

Just then a terrific roar arose from the garden.  Looking out, I saw Budge with a bleeding finger upon one hand, and my razor in the other; he afterward explained he had been making a boat, and that knife was bad to him.  To apply adhesive plaster to the cut was the work of but a minute, and I had barely completed this surgical operation when Tom’s gardener-coachman appeared and handed me a letter.  It was addressed in Helen’s well-known hand, and read as follows (the passages in brackets were my own comments):—­