The next day Alexa set Dawtie to search the house yet again for the missing goblet¹.

 

“It must be somewhere!” she said. “We are beset² with an absolute contradiction: the thing can't be in the house! and it must be in the house!”

 

“If we do find it,” returned Dawtie, “folk'll say them 'at could hide could weel seek! I s' luik naegait wantin' you, mem!”

 

The study was bare of books, and the empty shelves gave no hint of concealment³ They stood in its dreariness⁴ looking vaguely⁵ round them.

 

“Did it ever come to ye, mem,” said Dawtie, “that a minute or twa passed between Mr. Crawford comin' doon the stair wi' you, and me gaein' up to the maister? When I gaed intil the room, he lay pantin' i' the bed; but as I broodit upo' ilka thing alane i' the prison, he cam afore me, there i' the bed, as gien he had gotten oot o' 't, and hidden awa' the cup, and was jist gotten intil't again, the same moment I cam in.”

 

“Dying people will do strange things!” rejoined her mistress. “But it brings us no nearer the cup!”

 

“The surer we are, the better we'll seek!” said Dawtie.

 

They began, and went over the room thoroughly—looking everywhere they could think of. They had all but given it up to go on elsewhere, when Dawtie, standing⁶ again in the middle and looking about in a sort of unconscious hopelessness, found her eyes on the mantel-shelf, and went and laid her hand upon it. It was of wood, and she fancied it a little loose, but she could not move it.

 

“When Andrew comes we'll get him to examine it!” said Alexa.

 

He came in the evening, and Alexa told him what they had been doing. She begged him to get tools, and see whether there was not a space under the mantel-shelf. But Andrew, accustomed to ponder contrivances with Sandy, would have a good look at it first He came presently upon a clever little spring, pressing which he could lift the shelf: there under it, sure enough, in rich response to the candle he held, flashed the

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