When I came to
myself I was lying among some low bushes, not far from the railroad
track, and somebody was bathing my head with a wet handkerchief. It
was Sparrow MacCoy. "'I guess I couldn't leave you,' said he. 'I didn't want to have the
blood of two of you on my hands in one day. You loved your brother,
I've no doubt; but you didn't love him a cent more than I loved him,
though you'll say that I took a queer way to show it. Anyhow, it seems
a mighty empty world now that he is gone, and I don't care a
continental whether you give me over to the hangman or not.' "He had turned his ankle in the fall, and there we sat, he with his
useless foot, and I with my throbbing head, and we talked and talked
until gradually my bitterness began to soften and to turn into
something like sympathy. What was the use of revenging his death upon
a man who was as much stricken by that death as I was? And then, as my
wits gradually returned, I began to realize also that I could do
nothing against MacCoy which would not recoil upon my mother and
myself. How could we convict him without a full account of my
brother's career being made public--the very thing which of all others
we wished to avoid? It was really as much our interest as his to cover
the matter up, and from being an avenger of crime I found myself
changed to a conspirator against Justice. The place in which we found
ourselves was one of those pheasant preserves which are so common in
the Old Country, and as we groped our way through it I found myself
consulting the slayer of my brother as to how far it would be possible
to hush it up. "I soon realized from what he said that unless there were some papers
of which we knew nothing in my brother's pockets, there was really no
possible means by which the police could identify him or learn how he
had got there. His ticket was in MacCoy's pocket, and so was the
ticket for some baggage which they had left at the depot. Like most
Americans, he had found it cheaper and easier to buy an outfit in
London than to bring one from New York, so that all his linen and
clothes were new and unmarked. The bag, containing the dust-cloak,
which I had thrown out of the window, may have fallen among some
bramble patch where it is still concealed, or may have been carried off
by some tramp, or may have come into the possession of the police, who
kept the incident to themselves. Anyhow, I have seen nothing about it
in the London papers. As to the watches, they were a selection from
those which had been intrusted to him for business purposes. It may
have been for the same business purposes that he was taking them to
Manchester, but--well, it's too late to enter into that. "I don't blame the police for being at fault. I don't see how it could
have been otherwise. There was just one little clue that they might
have followed up, but it was a small one. I mean that small, circular
mirror which was found in my brother's pocket. It isn't a very common
thing for a young man to carry about with him, is it? But a gambler
might have told you what such a mirror may mean to a card-sharper. If
you sit back a little from the table, and lay the mirror, face upwards,
upon your lap, you can see, as you deal, every card that you give to
your adversary. It is not hard to say whether you see a man or raise
him when you know his cards as well as your own. It was as much a part
of a sharper's outfit as the elastic clip upon Sparrow MacCoy's arm. Taking that, in connection with the recent frauds at the hotels, the
police might have got hold of one end of the string. "I don't think there is much more for me to explain. We got to a
village called Amersham that night in the character of two gentlemen
upon a walking tour, and afterwards we made our way quietly to London,
whence MacCoy went on to Cairo and I returned to New York. My mother
died six months afterwards, and I am glad to say that to the day of her
death she never knew what happened. She was always under the delusion
that Edward was earning an honest living in London, and I never had the
heart to tell her the truth. He never wrote; but, then, he never did
write at any time, so that made no difference. His name was the last
upon her lips. "There's just one other thing that I have to ask you, sir, and I should
take it as a kind return for all this explanation, if you could do it
for me. You remember that Testament that was picked up. I always
carried it in my inside pocket, and it must have come out in my fall. I value it very highly, for it was the family book with my birth and my
brother's marked by my father in the beginning of it. I wish you would
apply at the proper place and have it sent to me. It can be of no
possible value to anyone else. If you address it to X, Bassano's
Library, Broadway, New York, it is sure to come to hand." The Japanned Box

It WAS a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque
and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I
lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But
I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained--well, as I tell
you the story you will learn what I gained. I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westwards, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no
towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You
have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you,
and everything is stone--stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of
stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits
the heart of a great nation. It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and
thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was
a widower--his wife had died three years before--and he had been left
with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of
seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this
little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more
obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two
little boys of our own. But, there--I have already revealed what it
was which I gained in Thorpe Place! It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some of
it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since
long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I
came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling
stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting
plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the
garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl
inside it and such a show of roses in front.