She went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had discovered it the day before.  It was not there; and she immediately began an eager search about the shop.

When Mr. Cave returned from his business with the dogfish, about a quarter to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and his wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter, routing among his taxidermic material.  Her face came up hot and angry over the counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she forthwith accused him of “hiding it.”

“Hid what?” asked Mr. Cave.

“The crystal!”

At that Mr. Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window.  “Isn’t it here?” he said.  “Great Heavens! what has become of it?”

Just then Mr. Cave’s step-son re-entered the shop from, the inner room—­he had come home a minute or so before Mr. Cave—­and he was blaspheming freely.  He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer down the road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed to find no dinner ready.

But when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father.  Their first idea, of course, was that he had hidden it.  But Mr. Cave stoutly denied all knowledge of its fate, freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the matter—­and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his wife and then his stepson of having taken it with a view to a private sale.  So began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which ended for Mrs. Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at the furniture establishment in the afternoon.  Mr. Cave took refuge from his wife’s emotions in the shop.

In the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter.  The supper passed unhappily and culminated in a painful scene.  Mr. Cave gave way at last to extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently.  The rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon the crystal.

The next day the two customers called again.  They were received by Mrs. Cave almost in tears.  It transpired that no one could imagine all that she had stood from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage. ...  She also gave a garbled account of the disappearance.  The clergyman and the Oriental laughed silently at one another, and said it was very extraordinary.  As Mrs. Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete history of her life they made to leave the shop.  Thereupon Mrs. Cave, still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman’s address, so that, if she could get anything out of Cave, she might communicate it.  The address was duly given, but apparently was afterwards mislaid.  Mrs. Cave can remember nothing about it.