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Higgins, in raking out the cinders of the forge, found what he supposed was a portion of the book’s cover. He believed his master had burned the volume.
    Having dismissed Higgins, I said to the earl: “The first thing to be done is to inclose this bill to Denny Co., booksellers, Strand. Tell them you have lost the volume, and ask them to send another. There is likely some one in the shop who can decipher the illegible writing. I am certain the book will give us a clue. Now, I shall write to Braun Sons, Budge Row. This is evidently a French company; in fact, the name as connected with paper making runs in my mind, although I cannot at this moment place it. I shall ask them the use of this paper that they furnished to the late earl.”
    This was done accordingly, and now, as we thought, until the answers came, we were two men out of work. Yet the next morning, I am pleased to say, and I have always rather plumed myself on the fact, I solved the mystery before replies were received from London. Of course, both the book and the answer of the paper agents, by putting two and two together, would have given us the key.
    After breakfast I strolled somewhat aimlessly into the library, whose floor was now strewn merely with brown wrapping paper, bits of string, and all that. As I shuffled among this with my feet, as if tossing aside dead autumn leaves in a forest path, my attention was suddenly drawn to several squares of paper, unwrinkled, and never used for wrapping. These sheets seemed to me strangely familiar. I picked one of them up, and at once the significance of the name Braun Sons occurred to me. They are paper makers in France, who produce a smooth, very tough sheet, which, dear as it is, proves infinitely cheap compared with the fine vellum it deposed in a certain branch of industry. In Paris, years before, these sheets had given me the knowledge of how a gang of thieves disposed of their gold without melting it. The paper was used instead of vellum in the rougher processes of manufacturing gold leaf. It stood the constant beating of the hammer nearly as well as the vellum, and here at once there flashed on me the secret of the old man’s midnight anvil work. He was transforming his sovereigns into gold leaf, which must have been of a rude, thick kind, because to produce the gold leaf of commerce he still needed the vellum as well as a “crutch” and other machinery, of which we had found no trace.
    “My lord,” I called to my assistant (he was at the other end of the room), “I wish to test a theory on the anvil of your own fresh common sense.”
    “Hammer away,” replied the earl, approaching me with his usual good-natured, jocular expression.
    “I eliminate the safe from our investigations because it was purchased thirteen years ago, but the buying of the book, of wall covering, of this tough paper from France, all group themselves into a set of incidents occurring within the same month as the purchase of the anvil and the building of the forge; therefore, I think they are related to one another. Here are some sheets of paper he got from Budge Row. Have you seen anything like it? Try to tear this sample.”
    “It’s reasonably tough,” admitted his lordship, fruitlessly endeavoring to rip it apart.
    “Yes. It was made in France, and is used in gold beating. Your uncle beat his sovereigns into gold leaf. You will find that the book from Denny’s is a volume on gold beating, and now as I remember that scribbled word which I could not make out, I think the title of the volume is ‘Metallurgy.’ It contains, no doubt, a chapter on the manufacture of gold leaf.”
    “I believe you,” said the earl; “but I don’t see that the discovery sets us any farther forward. We’re now looking for gold leaf instead of sovereigns.”
    “Let’s examine this wall paper,” said I.
    I placed my knife under a corner of it at the floor, and quite easily ripped off a large section. As Higgins had said, the brown paper