what he had promised. "If anything dreadful should come of this? I don't know what is in the safe. There may be money as well as papers."
"James, do you think I would steal? Do you mean to insinuate that I am a thief, sir? Do you dare to suspect that I would take money?"
James certainly looked as if he had thought even that possible.
"I shall open the safe, take out the papers, read them, and put them back just as I found them. Will that do for you?"
He shook hands again, and took himself off.
At seven o'clock Mr. Emblem came down-stairs again.
"Has any one been?" he asked as usual.
"Only Mr. Joseph."
"What might Mr. Joseph want?"
"Nothing at all."
"Then," said his grandfather, "Mr. Joseph might just as well have kept away."
Let us anticipate a little. James spent the next day hovering about in the hope that an opportunity would offer of getting the key in his possession for a few moments. There was no opportunity. The bunch of keys lay on the table under the old man's eyes all day, and when he left the table he carried them with him. But the day afterward he got his chance. One of the old customers called to talk over past bargains and former prizes. Mr. Emblem came out of the back shop with his visitor, and continued talking with him as far as the door. As he passed the table—James's table—he rested the hand which carried the keys on it, and left them there. James pounced upon them and slipped them into his pocket noiselessly. Mr. Emblem returned to his own chair and thought nothing of the keys for an hour and a half by the clock, and during this period James was out on business. When Mr. Emblem remembered his keys, he felt for them in their usual place and missed them, and then began searching about and cried out to James that he had lost his bunch of keys.
"Why, sir," said James, bringing them to him, after a little search, and with a very red face, "here they are; you must have left them on my table."
And in this way the job was done.
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