burn it down at all; for the roof was flat, and was in fact one gigantic
iron tank, like the roof of Mr. Goding's brewery in London. And by a neat
contrivance of American origin the whole tank could be turned in one
moment to a shower-bath, and drown a conflagration in thirty seconds or
thereabouts. Nor could he rifle the place; the goods were greatly
protected by their weight, and it was impossible to get out of the store
without raising an alarm, and being searched.

But, not to fall into the error of writers who underrate their readers'
curiosity and intelligence, and so deluge them with comments and
explanations, we will now simply relate what Wylie did, leaving you to
glean his motives as this tale advances.

His jacket had large pockets, and he took out of them a bunch of eighteen
bright steel keys, numbered, a set of new screwdrivers, a flask of rum,
and two ship biscuits.

He unlocked the eighteen cases marked _Proserpine,_ etc., and, peering in
with his lantern, saw the gold dust and small ingots packed in parcels,
and surrounded by Australian wool of the highest possible quality. It was
a luscious sight.

He then proceeded to a heavier task; he unscrewed, one after another,
eighteen of the cases marked _Shannon,_ and the eighteen so selected,
perhaps by private marks, proved to be packed close, and on a different
system from the gold, viz., in pigs, or square blocks, three, or in some
cases four, to each chest. Now, these two ways of packing the specie and
the baser metal, respectively, had the effect of producing a certain
uniformity of weight in the thirty-six cases Wylie was inspecting.
Otherwise the gold cases would have been twice the weight of those that