step, and then a key turned. Now, the master never locked his door,
so the key of that room turned rusty in the lock, and before I had
time to think more than that I was out of bed and in my
dressing-gown, creeping along the passage. Sure enough, my master's
door was open, as I saw by the streak of light across the corridor.
I walked softly on my bare feet, and no one could have heard me go
along the thick carpet. When I got to the door, I saw that what I
had been trying not to think of was really true. Master Jasper was
there taking the screws out of his father's coffin to see what was
in that green leather case.

I stood there and looked. I could not have moved, not for the
Queen's crown, if it had been offered me then and there. One after
another he took the screws out and laid them on the little bedside
table, where the master used to keep his pistols of a night. When
all the screws was out he lifted the lid in both his arms and set it
on the bed, where it lay looking like another coffin. Then he began
to search for what I had put in beside his father.

Now, I may be a heartless woman, and I suppose I am, or how account
for it? But when I saw my young master go to his father's coffin
like that, and begin to serve his own interest and his own
curiosity, every spark of love I had ever had for the boy died out,
and I cared no more for him than if he had been the first comer.

If he had kissed his father, or so much as looked kindly at the dead
face in the coffin, it would have been different. But he hadn't a
look or a thought to spare for him as gave him life, and had
humoured and spoiled and petted and made much of him all his twenty
years. Not a thought for his father; all his thoughts was to find