The dismay of Charity Symons, when he found that his well-intentioned present had only brought additional suffering upon the Lovegroves, was intense and bitter; but how to help them, he knew not. He had half made up his mind to obtain—no matter by what means—a sight of certain papers which he had long dimly suspected would make strange revelations upon matters affecting Mary Lovegrove, when the arrest of her husband on a charge of incendiarism thoroughly determined him to risk the expedient he had long hesitatingly contemplated. The charge, he was quite satisfied in his own mind, was an atrocious fabrication, strongly as circumstances seemed to color and confirm it.
The clerk, as he sat that afternoon in the office silently pursuing his ill-paid drudgery, noticed that his employer was strangely ill at ease. He was restless, and savagely impatient of the slightest delay on the most necessary question. Evening fell early—it was now near the end of October, and Symons with a respectful bow, left the office. A few minutes afterward, the attorney having carefully locked his desk, iron chest, &c., and placed the keys in his pocket, followed.
Two hours had elapsed, when Symons re-entered the house by the back way, walked through the kitchen, softly ascended the stairs, and groped his way to the inner, private office. There was no moon, and he dared not light a candle; but the faint starlight fortunately enabled him to move about without stumbling or noise. He mounted the office steps, and inserted the edge of a sharp broad chisel between the lock and the lid of a heavy iron-bound box marked 'C.' The ease and suddenness with which the lid yielded to the powerful effort he applied to it, overthrew his balance, and he with difficulty saved himself from falling on the floor. The box was not locked, and on putting his hand into it, he discovered that it was entirely empty! The tell-tale papers had been removed, probably destroyed! At the moment Symons made this exasperating discovery, the sound of approaching footsteps struck upon his startled senses, and shaking with fright, he had barely time to descend the steps, and coop himself up in a narrow cupboard under one of the desks, when the Nicholses, father and son, entered the office—the former with a candle in his hand.
"We are private here," said the father in a low, guarded voice; "and I tell you you must listen to reason.
"I don't like it a bit," rejoined the young man. "It's a cowardly, treacherous business; and as for swearing I saw him near the fire when it so strangely burst out, I won't do it at any price."
"Listen to me, you foolish, headstrong boy," retorted the elder Nichols, "before you decide on beggary for yourself, and ruin—the gallows, perhaps, for me."
"Wh-e-e-e-w! Why, what do you mean?"
"I will tell you. You already know that Mary Woodhouse married Robert Clarke against his uncle's consent; you also know that Robert Clarke died about five years after the marriage, and that the seventy pounds a year which the uncle allowed his nephew to keep him from starvation was continued to be paid through me to his widow."
"Yes, I have heard all this before."
"But you do not know," continued the attorney in an increasingly-agitated voice, "that about six years after Robert Clarke's death, the uncle so far relented toward the widow and daughter—though he would never see either of them—as to increase the annuity to two hundred pounds, and that at his death, four years since, he bequeathed Mrs. Clarke five hundred pounds per annum, with succession to her daughter: all of which sums, I, partly on account of your riot and extravagance, have appropriated."