Dr. Knox did not appear to look at Sally as he spoke, but he saw and noted every movement. He saw that her hand shook so that she could scarcely hold the iron.
“Has it never struck you, Sally, that you might have put the bank-note into the grate with these scraps of paper, and burnt it?” he continued. “Innocently, of course. That is how I think the note must have disappeared. Had the wind taken it into the garden, it would most probably have been found.”
Sally flung her apron over her face and herself on to a chair, and burst into a howl. Eliza looked at her.
“If you think there is a probability that this was the case, Sally, you must say so,” continued Dr. Knox. “You will never be blamed, except for not having spoken.”
“’Twas only yesterday I asked Sally whether she didn’t think this was the way it might have been,” said the cook in a low tone to Dr. Knox. “She have seemed so put out, sir, for a week past.”
“I vow to goodness that I never knew I did it,” sobbed Sally. “All the while the bother was about, and Miss Carey, poor young lady, was off her head, it never once struck me. What Eliza and me thought was, that some tramps must have come round the side of the house and got in at the open glass-doors, and stole it. The night after Miss Carey left with her aunt, I was thinking about her as I lay in bed, and wondering whether the mistress would send the police after her or not, when all of a sudden the thought flashed across me that it might have gone into the fire with the other pieces of paper. Oh mercy, I wish I was somewhere!”
“What became of the ashes out of the grate?—the cinders?” asked Dr. Knox.
“They’re all in the ash-place, sir, waiting till the garden’s ready for them,” sobbed Sally.
With as little delay as possible, Dr. Knox had the cinders carefully sifted and examined, when the traces of what had once undoubtedly been a bank-note were discovered. The greater portion of the note had been reduced to tinder, but a small part of it remained, enough to show what it had been, and—by singular good fortune—its number. It must have fallen out of the grate partly consumed, while the fire was lighting up, and been swept underneath by Sally with other remnants, where it had lain quietly until morning and been taken away with the ashes.
The traces gathered carefully into a small box and sealed up, Dr. Knox went into the presence of his step-mother.