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  [Illustration: The children leant forward and peered down into this
  wonderful box. _Page 113._]




UNDER PADLOCK AND SEAL

BY HAROLD AVERY


Thomas Nelson and Sons
London, Edinburgh, Dublin
and New York




 _CONTENTS._

    _I. Downstairs in the Dark_,            9
   _II. The Lost Carving-Knife_,           19
  _III. Uncle Roger's Box_,                30
   _IV. The Box Opened_,                   41
    _V. A Naval Disaster_,                 51
   _VI. More Mystery_,                     61
  _VII. Sad News_,                         71
 _VIII. Elsie has a Fright_,               82
   _IX. A Fresh Discovery_,                93
    _X. Elsie's Confession_,              103
   _XI. Uncle Roger's Legacy_,            112
  _XII. The Riddle Solved_,               122




UNDER PADLOCK AND SEAL.

 [Illustration]




CHAPTER I.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE DARK.


Elsie pushed away the bed-clothes which were covering her ear, and
listened; then she sat up in bed, and listened again.

 [Illustration]

There was no doubt that it was an actual sound, and not mere
imagination. How long it had been going on, or when it first began to
mingle in a confused manner with her dreams, she could not say; but now
she heard it plainly enough, and recognized what it was--the peculiar,
grating hiss of a grindstone, punctuated every now and then with a
subdued little squeak made by the treadle.

Who on earth should want to be grinding anything at that time of night?

The Pines was a rambling old house; the girls always slept with their
window open; and just below was an outbuilding, part of which was used
as a tool-house, in which stood the grindstone; and thus the sound had
reached Elsie at a moment when perhaps her slumber was not as deep as
usual. The noise continued, with pauses at regular intervals, when
whatever was being sharpened was removed from the stone. Taking care not
to disturb her elder sister, Ida, whose heavy breathing showed that she
was sound asleep, the little girl slipped out of bed, and crept softly
over to the window. By straining her neck, and pressing her cheek close
against the pane, she could just get a glimpse of the tool-house window,
which she noticed was faintly illuminated, as it might have been by the
feeble rays of a night-light.

A sudden thought occurred to Elsie that it must be her cousin, Brian
Seaton, who lived at the Pines, and went to school with her brother
Guy. Brian was always boat-building; sometimes he sat up later than he
ought to have done, and continued to work long after every one else was
in bed. No doubt the rascal was doing so now, and had stolen down to put
a fresh edge on his chisel. Elsie was a spirited young monkey, and she
and Brian were great chums.

"I'll just creep down and show him I've found him out," she said to
herself. "What fun to take him by surprise!"

To put on dressing-gown and slippers was but the work of a few moments.
Softly opening the bedroom door, she passed out on to the landing, and
groping in the darkness until she found the rail of the banisters, she
proceeded down the stairs.

How still and quiet the house seemed! Nothing broke the silence but the
solemn "tick-tack" of the big clock in the hall, which had been ticking
in the same sedate manner since the days when Elsie's grandmother had
been a little girl. Feeling her way down the length of the hall, not
without an occasional bump against chairs and other such obstacles,
Elsie came to a little lobby or cloak-room, having at the farther
end a half-glass door, which opened on the yard, and from which the
tool-house was distant not more than a dozen paces. She quite expected
to find this door open, and was surprised to discover that it was not
only shut, but locked on the inside.

"What a beggar Brian is!" thought the girl. "He must have climbed out of
his window, and come down the water-pipe, as he did one day last summer."

She laid her hand on the key, when a low growling noise gave her quite
a little fright, until she remembered that it was the old clock in the
hall preparing to strike--"clearing his throat," as Ida called the
operation. The next moment the bell struck--

"Ting! ting!"

Elsie listened with a gasp of astonishment; the old clock ignored the
halves and quarters, so the time must be two o'clock in the morning!
She never remembered having been up so early or so late before, and the
thought that she was wandering about the house at that unearthly hour
made her feel quite queer.

"What can Brian be about?" she murmured. "He can't have been sitting up
working till this time."

She turned the handle of the door, and stepped across the threshold. The
cold night air made her shiver, the whir of the grindstone came clear
and distinct from the tool-house, and the window still gleamed with
the same subdued, ghostly light. Elsie had intended to rush across the
flagstones, fling open the door, shout "Brian, go to bed!" and then
herself beat a hasty retreat; but, just when she was on the point of
doing so, she hesitated.

What if it shouldn't be Brian after all? And if it were not her cousin,
who or what could be there in the tool-house turning the grindstone at
two o'clock in the morning?

It is when we pause to