Jimmie stepped to the railing of the veranda, raised his foot to a cleat of the awning, and swung himself sprawling upon the veranda roof.  On hands and knees across the shingles, still warm from the sun, he crept to the open window.  There for some minutes, while his eyes searched the room, he remained motionless.  When his eyes grew used to the semidarkness he saw that the bed lay flat, that the door to the boudoir was shut, that the room was empty.  As he moved across it toward the bookcase, his stockinged feet on the bare oak floor gave forth no sound.  He assured himself there was no occasion for alarm.  But when, with the electric torch with which he had prepared himself, he swept the book-shelves, he suffered all the awful terrors of a thief.

His purpose was to restore a lost fortune; had he been intent on stealing one he could not have felt more deeply guilty.  At last the tiny shaft of light fell upon the title of the “Pickwick Papers.”  With shaking fingers Jimmie drew the book toward him.  In his hands it fell open, and before him lay “The Last Will and Testament of James Blagwin, Esquire.”

With an effort Jimmie choked a cry of delight.  He had reason to feel relief.  In dragging the will from its hiding-place he had put behind him the most difficult part of his adventure; the final ceremony of replacing it in the safe was a matter only of minutes.  With self-satisfaction Jimmie smiled; in self-pity he sighed miserably.  For, when those same minutes had passed, again he would be an exile.  As soon as he had set his house in order, he must leave it, and once more upon the earth become a wanderer and an outcast.

The knob of the door from the bedroom he grasped softly and, as he turned it, firmly.  Stealthily, with infinite patience and stepping close to the wall, he descended the stairs, tiptoed across the hall, and entered the living-room.  On the lower floor he knew he was alone.  No longer, like Oliver Twist breaking into the scullery of Mr. Giles, need he move in dreadful fear.  But as a cautious general, even when he advances, maps out his line of retreat, before approaching the safe Jimmie prepared his escape.  The only entrances to the dining-room were through the living-room, in which he stood, and from the butler’s pantry.  It was through the latter he determined to make his exit.  He crossed the dining-room, and in the pantry cautiously raised the window, and on the floor below placed a chair.  If while at work upon the safe he were interrupted, to reach the lawn he had but to thrust back the door to the pantry, leap to the chair, and through the open window fall upon the grass.  If his possible pursuers gave him time, he would retrieve his shoes; if not, he would abandon them.  They had not been made to his order, but bought in the Sixth Avenue store where he was unknown, and they had been delivered to a man named Henry Hull.  If found, instead of compromising him, they rather would help to prove the intruder was a stranger.