On this
particular occasion, however, he had gone out with something like a
special purpose; for he had left Kirk Street, not so much for the sake
of taking a walk, as for the sake of thinking clearly and at his ease.
Mat's brain was never so fertile in expedients as when he was moving
his limbs freely in the open air.
Hardly a chance word had dropped from Zack that night which had not
either confirmed him in his resolution to possess himself of
Valentine's Hair Bracelet, or helped to suggest to him the manner in
which his determination to obtain it might be carried out. The first
great necessity imposed on him by his present design, was to devise the
means of secretly opening the painter's bureau; the second was to hit
on some safe method--should no chance opportunity occur--of approaching
it unobserved. Mat had remarked that Mr. Blyth wore the key of the
bureau attached to his watch chain; and Mat had just heard from young
Thorpe that Mr. Blyth was about to pay them a visit in Kirk Street. On
the evening of that visit, therefore, the first of the two objects--the
discovery of a means of secretly opening the bureau--might, in some
way, be attained. How?
This was the problem which Mat set off to solve to his own perfect
satisfaction, in the silence and loneliness of a long night's walk.
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