evidence!"

Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle,--a laugh like the laugh
of a superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards.
He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which he
seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are
a strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except to
find out this ultimate remainderman; mind that!"

"Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labour."

"The search will be expensive."

"There is oil for your wheels," answered Jason, putting a note-book into
his confidant's hands. "But mind you waste it not. No tricks, no false
play, with me; you know Jason, or, if you like the name better, you know
the Rattlesnake!"

"I will account for every penny," said Grabman, eagerly, and clasping his
hands, while his pale face grew livid.

"I do not doubt it, my quill-driver. Look sharp, start to-morrow. Get
thyself decent clothes, be sober, cleanly, and respectable. Act as a man
who sees before him 5,000 pounds. And now, light me downstairs."

With the candle in his hand, Grabman stole down the rugged steps even
more timorously than Beck had ascended them, and put his finger to his
mouth as they came in the dread vicinity of No. 7. But Jason, or rather
Gabriel Varney, with that fearless, reckless bravado of temper which,
while causing half his guilt, threw at times a false glitter over its