a very curious subject of psychological study; but he could easily
put himself in the place of that portion of the public whose memory
was long enough for their patriotism to receive a shock. It was some
time fortunately since the conduct of public affairs had wanted for
men of disinterested ability, but the extraordinary documents
concealed (of all places in the world--it was as fantastic as a
nightmare) in a "bargain" picked up at second-hand by an obscure
scribbler, would be a calculable blow to the retrospective mind.
Baron saw vividly that if these relics should be made public the
scandal, the horror, the chatter would be immense. Immense would be
also the contribution to truth, the rectification of history. He had
felt for several days (and it was exactly what had made him so
nervous) as if he held in his hand the key to public attention.

"There are too many things to explain," Mr. Locket went on, "and the
singular provenance of your papers would count almost overwhelmingly
against them even if the other objections were met. There would be a
perfect and probably a very complicated pedigree to trace. How did
they get into your davenport, as you call it, and how long had they
been there? What hands secreted them? what hands had, so incredibly,
clung to them and preserved them? Who are the persons mentioned in
them? who are the correspondents, the parties to the nefarious
transactions? You say the transactions appear to be of two distinct
kinds--some of them connected with public business and others
involving obscure personal relations."

"They all have this in common," said Peter Baron, "that they
constitute evidence of uneasiness, in some instances of painful
alarm, on the writer's part, in relation to exposure--the exposure in
the one case, as I gather, of the fact that he had availed himself of