"
He paused again, and his big shoulders blotted out the window.
"Every natural event," he continued, "is intimately connected
with innumerable events that precede and follow. It has so many
serrated points of contact with other events that the human mind
is not able to fit a false event so that no trace of the joinder
will appear. The most skilled workmen in the devil's shop are
only able to give their false piece a blurred joinder."
He stopped and turned to the row of mahogany drawers beside him.
"Now, my boy," he said, "can you tell me why the one who
ransacked this room, in opening and tumbling the contents of all
the drawers, about, did not open the two at the bottom of the row
where I stand?"
"Because there was nothing in them of value, sir," replied the
lad.
"What is in them?" said my father.
"Only old letters, sir, written to my father, when I was in Paris
- nothing else."
"And who would know that?" said my father.
The boy went suddenly white.
"Precisely!" said my father. "You alone knew it, and when you
undertook to give this library the appearance of a pillaged room,
you unconsciously endowed your imaginary robber with the thing
you knew yourself.
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