52 THE MISSING TREASURE. 



Tomb, not (this evening) with that in the churchyard, but 

 with his grandfather's miniature model of the same. 



He had reluctantly subtracted in the morning from his four 

 pounds remainder, two shillings, with one of which he dis- 

 charged his only debt to his landlady, putting the other in his 

 pocket with the key of his treasure-box. Now this shilling, 

 which he had brought home again, he thought he would 

 return to where it had been so long entombed, and, with 

 this intent, looked for the oaken box, in the cupboard where 

 he had inadvertently left it. To his surprise and consterna- 

 tion it was gone. He rumaged despairingly and vainly in the 

 few other hiding-places his little room afforded ; but it was 

 gone quite gone ! 



He hastened down to tell his loss to the old woman. She 

 was gone too out to a neighbour's; and in an agony of 

 distress and impatience Tim was turning to remount the ladder 

 stair, and look again where he had vainly looked before, when, 

 on passing close to an old walnut-tree chest of drawers, which 

 occupied one corner of the kitchen, he nearly stumbled over 

 something on the brick floor, and on picking it up found it to 

 be a bit of his missing box one of the carved pinnacles from 

 off a corner of the miniature tomb. The blood rushed for a 

 moment into Tim's pale face, which then grew paler. It was 

 she, then, his friend, who had robbed him of his little all ! 



He trembled, and, quite overcome by alarm and vexation, 

 following on the fatigue and excitement of the day, sank into 



