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Rh hand on his shoulder was trembling and cold—he could feel it cold through the linen of his pajama jacket.

"Father, you must go back to bed!" she commanded uselessly. He would not stir yet. A servant, at her call, brought a robe which she put over him, and she drew slippers on his feet.

"They came, at least some of them came,"—Santoine had risen, fighting down his grief over his cousin's death; he stood holding the robe about him—"for what was in your safe, Harriet."

"I know; I saw it open."

"What is gone?" Santoine demanded.

He heard her picking up the contents of the safe from the floor and carrying them to the table and examining them; he was conscious that, having done this, she stood staring about the room as though to see whether anything had escaped her search.

"What is gone?" Santoine repeated.

"Why—nearly all the formal papers seem to be gone; lists and agreements relating to a dozen different things."

"None of the correspondence?"

"No; that all seems to be here."

Santoine was breathing quickly; the trust for which he had been ready to die—for which Blatchford had died—seemed safe; but recognition of this only emphasized and deepened his perplexity as to what the meaning had been of the struggle which an instant before had been going on around him.

"We don't know whether he got it, then, or not!" It was Avery's voice which broke in upon him; Santoine merely listened.

"He? Who?" He heard his daughter's challenge.