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66 or Pudleigh had not yet had the shares registered in his name though the transaction was months old.

I foresaw that I was going to put Pudleigh's executor to a good deal of trouble, hunting for these documents; but I crumpled up a newspaper in the empty grate, laid the certificates and the memoranda on the top of it, put a match to it, and burnt them to very fine ashes. The granite share transfer I locked up in my safe, and promised myself to give Morton a hint to refuse to admit that the shares had ever passed out of the possession of Miss Pavis and to insist on the production of the transfer, so that if anything were ever made of the property she would get her share of it.

I went to bed with a strangely even mind, no longer troubled by thoughts of the Siberian pheasant or of Pudleigh. Later events had left but little room in my mind for musing upon his fate; I was thinking about my guest. I soon fell asleep, and slept soundly until I was awakened next morning by the noise of Mrs. Plimsoll, my housekeeper, banging her broom against the furniture in her efforts to sweep the sitting-room. I called to her to wake my sister and show her the bathroom; then I lay in a pleasant drowsiness, reflecting gratefully that £2,000 would very soon be in my hands for the Children's Hospital, and trying to remember exactly which children