That was all—­not an object having commercial value, no papers—­nothing.  But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room.  My wife had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the two stones in the wall.

Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of the realm.  When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced them as they were originally laid.  From the cellar she had easily escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts.  I have endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a writ of disinterment and constructive revival.  So it looks as if I must suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid alike of principle and shame.

THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY

I was born of poor because honest parents, and until I was twenty-three years old never knew the possibilities of happiness latent in another person’s coin.  At that time Providence threw me into a deep sleep and revealed to me in a dream the folly of labor.  “Behold,” said a vision of a holy hermit, “the poverty and squalor of your lot and listen to the teachings of nature.  You rise in the morning from your pallet of straw and go forth to your daily labor in the fields.  The flowers nod their heads in friendly salutation as you pass.  The lark greets you with a burst of song.  The early sun sheds his temperate beams upon you, and from the dewy grass you inhale an atmosphere cool and grateful to your lungs.  All nature seems to salute you with the joy of a generous servant welcoming a faithful master.  You are in harmony with her gentlest mood and your soul sings within you.  You begin your daily task at the plow, hopeful that the noonday will fulfill the promise of the morn, maturing the charms of the landscape and confirming its benediction upon your spirit.  You follow the plow until fatigue invokes repose, and seating yourself upon the earth at the end of your furrow you expect to enjoy in fulness the delights of which you did but taste.

“Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky and his beams are become a torrent.  The flowers have closed their petals, confining their perfume and denying their colors to the eye.  Coolness no longer exhales from the grass:  the dew has vanished and the dry surface of the fields repeats the fierce heat of the sky.  No longer the birds of heaven salute you with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from the edge of the copse.  Unhappy man! all the gentle and healing ministrations of nature are denied you in punishment of your sin.  You have broken the First Commandment of the Natural Decalogue:  you have labored!”