"The manuscript?"

"Not really a manuscript. Only a single page of parchment. A page from the traveler's original manuscript. It had something in it that the monk left out."

"You think his conscience bothered him and he compromised by binding the page from which he had deleted something under the back cover of the book."

"Something like that," said Cornwall. "Now let us talk about what you came here for."

"The monk," the goblin said. "You do not know this monk, Oswald, as I do. Of all the scruffy crew, he is by far the worst. No man is safe from him, no thing is sacred. Perhaps it has crossed your mind he might have had a purpose in not apprehending you, in not raising an outcry."

"My theft does not seem to perturb you," Cornwall pointed out.

"Not at all," the goblin said. "I am rather on your side. For years this cursed monk has tried his best to make my life a misery. He has tried to trap me; he has tried to hunt me down. I have cracked his shins aplenty and have managed, in one way or another, to pay him back for every shabby trick, but he still persists. I bear him no goodwill. Perhaps you've gathered that."

"You think he intends to inform on me?"

"If I know him," the goblin said, "he intends to sell the information."

"To whom would he sell it? Who would be interested?"

"Consider," said the goblin, "that a hidden manuscript has been filched from its hiding place in an ancient book. The fact that it seemed important enough to be hidden—and important enough to be filched—would be intriguing, would it not?"

"I suppose you're right."