taken off his boots at his companion’s instigation, and his stockinged feet made no sound upon the thick carpet.
“What is he going to do with those keys?” Eleanor thought. “If he knows the contents of the will, as Richard believed, what good can the keys be to him?”
She still looked into the lighted bed-chamber, wondering what could happen next. Where had Launcelot Darrell gone, and what was he going to do with the keys? She crept along by the side of the house, past the window of the dressing-room, which was still dark, and stopped when she came to the window of the old man’s study. All the windows upon this floor were in the same style—long French windows, opening to the ground, and they were all sheltered by Venetian shutters. The shutters of the sitting-room were closed, but the window was open, and through the bars of the shutters Eleanor saw a faint glimmer of light.
She drew the shutter nearest her a little way open, and looked into the room. The light that she had seen came from a very small bull’s-eye lantern, which the Frenchman held in his hand. He was standing over Launcelot Darrell, who was on his knees before the lower half of an old-fashioned secrétaire, at which Mr. de Crespigny had been in the habit of writing, and in which he had kept papers.
The lower half of this secrétaire contained a great many little drawers, which were closed in by a pair of inlaid ebony doors. The doors were open now, and Launcelot Darrell was busy examining the contents of the drawers one by one. His hands still trembled, and he went to work slowly and awkwardly. The Frenchman, whose nerves appeared in no way shaken, contrived to throw the light of the bull’s-eye always upon the papers in the young man’s hand.
“Have you found what you want?” he asked.
“No, there’s nothing yet; nothing but leases, receipts, letters, bills.”
“Be quick! Remember we have to put the keys back, and to get away. Have you the other ready?”
“Yes.”
They spoke in whispers, but their whispers were perhaps more distinct than their ordinary tones would have been. Eleanor could hear every word they said.
There was a long pause, during which Launcelot Darrell opened and shut several drawers, taking a hurried survey of their contents. Presently he uttered a half-smothered cry.
“You’ve got it?” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“Yes.”
“Put in the substitute then, and lock the cabinet.”
Launcelot Darrell threw the document which he had taken from the drawer upon a chair near him, and took another paper from his pocket. He put this second paper in the place from which he had taken the first, and then shut the drawer, and closed and locked the doors of the cabinet. He did all this in nervous haste, and neither he nor his companion perceived that a third paper, very much like the first in shape and size, had fallen out of one of the drawers and lay upon the carpet before the cabinet.
Now, for the first time, Eleanor Monckton began to comprehend the nature of the conspiracy which she had witnessed. Launcelot Darrell and his accomplice had substituted a fictitious paper for the real will signed by Maurice de Crespigny and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton and the lawyer’s clerk. The genuine document was that which Launcelot Darrell had flung upon the chair by the side of the secrétaire.
THE GRASS OF THE FIELD.
In the early summer, our woods and meadows are feathered by numerous flowering grasses, which form objects of great interest to the botanist and the artist. Yet comparatively few avail themselves of the great pleasure which these elegant plants offer. Flowers are eagerly culled for the tasteful bouquet, but seldom does a group of flowers present so light and graceful a contour as a group of grasses. Ferns and sea-weeds are patiently studied, and grasses are neglected, though these latter are much more easy of classification, more beautiful as dried specimens, and as valuable in cultivation and in our drawing-room vase. These graceful plants, however, are gradually receiving more attention from the fancy gardener; bunches of Pampas grass wave their pennons on our lawns, and lift high their panicles of glossy florets; and the Hare’s tail, Panick, and Quaking-grasses alternate with flowers in the gay borders. In Germany and Switzerland we find grass bouquets in every drawing-room, and dried ones for the winter, retaining their own soft colouring, not disfigured by gaudy tints, as we see in the dyed bunches sold in our bazaars.
Hoping to tempt the lovers of nature to turn their attention to this much-neglected tribe of plants, I venture to offer them some remarks on their history. A grass is the simplest form of a perfect plant. From a fibrous root a slender stem shoots up, clothed with alternate leaves, which are long and narrow, and have the veins running side by side from one end to the other. In the true grasses the stems are round and hollow, and the sheaths of the leaves open at one side; but in their cousins the sedges, the stems are solid and angular, and the leaf-sheaths form perfect cylinders. The highest leaf on the stem of the grass acts as a cradle for the buds until they are sufficiently formed to emerge to the open day. In the sedges the male and female parts of the flower, that is, the stamens and pistils, are on separate spikes, or, at any rate, in separate florets. Both sedges and grasses have three stamens, and most of them two pistils. The sedges have no calyx or corolla; the male flowers are accompanied by a tiny leaf or bract, and the female by a few bristles.
The graceful forms adorning our woods and river margins,—bending and drooping in every variety of easy curve under the weight of pendulous catkins, or rising into stronger independence where the seed-spikes are erect, and their increasing