Then he locked up the notes in the safe, and just then Hope opened the door of the little office and looked in.

“At last,” said Bartley.

“Well, sir,” said Hope, “I have only been half an hour, and I have changed my clothes and stood witness to a marriage.  She begged me so hard:  I was at the door.  Such a beautiful girl!  I could not take my eyes off her.”

“The child?” said Bartley, with natural impatience.

“I have hidden her in the yard.”

“Bring her this moment, while the clerks are out.”

Hope hurried out, and soon returned with his child, wrapped up in a nice warm shawl he had bought her with Bartley’s money.

Bartley took the child from him, looked at her face, and said, “Little darling, I shall love her as my own;” then he begged Hope to sit down in the lobby till he should call him and introduce him to his clerks.  “One of them is a thief, I’m afraid.”

He took the child inside, and gave her to his confederate, the nurse.

“Dear me,” thought Hope, “only two clerks, and one of them dishonest.  I hope it is not that good-natured boy.  Oh no! impossible.”

And now Bartley returned, and at the same time Monckton came briskly in through the little office.

At sight of him Bartley said, “Oh, Monckton, I gave that fellow Bolton a week’s notice.  But he insists on going directly,” Monckton replied, slyly, that he was sorry to hear that.

“Suspicious?  Eh?” said Bartley.

“So suspicious that if I were you—­Indeed, Mr. Bartley, I think, in justice to me, the matter ought to be cleared to the bottom.”

“You are right,” said Bartley:  “I’ll have him searched before he goes.  Fetch me a detective at once.”

Bartley then wrote a line upon his card, and handed it to Monckton, directing him to lose no time.  He then rushed out of the house with an air of virtuous indignation, and went to make some delicate arrangements to carry out a fraud, which, begging his pardon, was as felonious, though not so prosaic, as the one he suspected his young clerk of.  Monckton was at first a little taken aback by the suddenness of all this; but he was too clear-headed to be long at fault.  The matter was brought to a point.  Well, he must shoot flying.

In a moment he was at the safe, whipped out a bunch of false keys, opened the safe, took out the cash-box, and swept all the gold it contained into his own pockets, and took possession of the notes.  Then he locked up the cash-box again, restored it to the safe, locked that, and sat down at Bartley’s table.  He ran over the notes with feverish fingers, and then took the precaution to examine Bartley’s day-book.  His caution was rewarded—­he found that the notes Bolton had brought in were numbered.  He instantly made two parcels—­clapped the unnumbered notes into his pocket.  The numbered ones he took in his hand into the lobby.  Now this