It was perfectly true; the box was as empty as Mother Hubbard's famous cupboard.
"What a sell!" cried Guy, and burst out laughing. The disappointment was almost too much for Elsie; the tears came into her eyes, and her lips trembled.
"Cheer up, little woman!" said her father kindly. "It might have been worse. D'you remember the story in the 'Arabian Nights' of the fisherman who dragged a brass bottle out of the sea, and when he had broken the seals and taken out the stopper a great genie rushed forth in a cloud of smoke, telling the unfortunate man to choose what death he would die? Suppose, now, the same sort of creature came out of this box."
"I do call it a lot too bad!" exclaimed Ida. "D'you think Uncle Roger really did it on purpose, and left you only an empty box?"
"I'm sure I don't know," replied her father. "It seems like it. Perhaps he did it for a joke."
"A very silly sort of joke, then," continued the girl snappishly, "to make people keep a stupid old box for twenty years, when it was empty all the time."
"D'you think, uncle," began Brian, "that there was something in it once, but that it's been stolen?"
"That's impossible," was the answer. "No one could open the box without breaking the seals on the padlocks, and there you saw them just now intact, as they have always been. Supposing a thief had broken them, he couldn't have made fresh ones unless he had had the old man's seal, which I keep locked up in one of the drawers of my safe at the office."
"I suppose it would be impossible to break into the box through the bottom or one of the sides?" said the boy thoughtfully.
"Oh yes," answered Guy. "You couldn't possibly do that. It's made of solid oak, and see how strongly it's bound with iron. If you wanted to break into it at all, you'd have to smash it all up with an axe or sledge-hammer."