Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/373

 replace the contents of the box. But at the first sound of rustling papers, the minister appeared to rouse again. He had stood all alone. No one had touched him. No one had addressed him. The most indifferent in this circle were stricken dumb by the spectacle of his fall, while his friends were almost as much appalled and dazed as he himself appeared to be.

"I suppose," he said with melancholy interest, at the same time moving round the table to the box, "that I may take it now."

"Certainly, Doctor," replied Searle suavely, yielding his place. Nevertheless, there was a slight expression of surprise upon his face, as upon those of the others, at the minister's sudden revival of concern in what must now be an utterly trifling detail so far as his own future went. Hampstead appeared to perceive this.

"There are sacred responsibilities here," he explained gravely, with a halting utterance that proclaimed the deeps that heaved within him; "which, strange as it may seem to you gentlemen, even at such an hour I would not like to forget."

Taking up a handful of the papers, he ran them through his fingers, his eye pausing for a moment to scan each one of them, and his expression kindling with first one memory and then another, as if he found a mournful satisfaction in recalling past days when many a man and woman had found peace for their souls in making him the sharer in their heart-burdens,—days which every member of that little circle felt instinctively were now gone forever.

Last of all his eye checked itself upon the envelope marked "Wadham Currency." Allowing the other papers to slip back to their place in the box the minister turned his glance into the open side of this remaining envelope. It was empty, save for a card tucked in the corner.