were the papers, and he was determined to find them. He stood up and
examined the top of the chest. There was certainly a space between the
visible depths of the interior and the back wall. He rapped loudly,
but the wood and the stuff with which it was covered were too thick;
there was no answering ring. He recalled the night when he had
cynically examined the fragments of the broken cabinet at Rhyd-Alwyn.
He felt anything but cynical now; indeed, he was conscious of a
restless eagerness and a dogged determination with which curiosity had
little to do. He would find those papers if he died in the attempt.

He knelt once more before the chest, and once more pressed his
finger along its interior, following regular lines. Then he shook the
pillars, and inserted his penknife in each most minute interstice of
the carving; he prodded the ribs of the arches, and brought his fist
down violently on the separate floors of the mosque. At the end of an
hour he sprang to his feet with a smothered oath, and cutting a slit
in the cover of the chest with his penknife, tore it off and examined
the top and sides as carefully as his strained eyes and trembling
hands would allow. He was ashamed of his nervousness, but he was
powerless to overcome it. His examination met with no better success,
and he suddenly sprang across the room and snatched the battle-axe
from the wall. He walked quickly back to the chest. For a moment he
hesitated, the thing was so beautiful! But only for a moment. The
overmastering desire to feel those papers in his hands had driven out
all regard for art. He lifted the axe on high and brought it down on
the top of the chest with a blow which made the little room echo. He
was a powerful man, and the axe was imbedded to its haft. He worked it
out of the tough wood and planted another blow, which widened the rift
and made the stout old chest creak like a falling tree. The mutilated
wood acted upon Dartmouth like the smell of blood upon a wolf: the