aid Mr. Negget, and with brazen effrontery not only met
his wife's eye without quailing, but actually glanced down at her boots.

Mr. Bodfish came back to his chair and ruminated. Then he looked up and
spoke.

"It was missed this morning at ten minutes past twelve," he said, slowly;
"it was there last night. At eleven o'clock you came in and found Mrs.
Driver sitting in that chair."

"No, the one you're in," interrupted his niece.

"It don't signify," said her uncle. "Nobody else has been near the
place, and Emma's box has been searched.

"Thoroughly searched," testified Mrs. Negget.

"Now the point is, what did Mrs. Driver come for this morning?" resumed
the ex-constable. "Did she come--"

He broke off and eyed with dignified surprise a fine piece of wireless
telegraphy between husband and wife. It appeared that Mr. Negget sent
off a humorous message with his left eye, the right being for some reason
closed, to which Mrs. Negget replied with a series of frowns and staccato
shakes of the head, which her husband found easily translatable. Under
the austere stare of Mr. Bodfish their faces at once regained their
wonted calm, and the ex-constable in a somewhat offended manner resumed
his inquiries.

"Mrs. Driver has been here a good bit lately," he remarked, slowly.

Mr. Negget's eyes watered, and his mouth worked piteously.

"If you can't behave yourself, George--began began his wife, fiercely.

"What is the matter?" demanded Mr. Bodfish. "I'm not aware that I've
said anything to be laughed at."

"No more you have, uncle," retorted his niece; "only George is such a
stupid. He's got an idea in his silly head that Mrs. Driver--But it's
all nonsense, of course."

"I've merely got a bit of an idea that it's a wedding-ring, not a brooch,
Mrs. Driver is after," said the farmer to the perplexed constable.

Mr. Bodfish looked from one to the other. "But you always keep yours on,
Lizzie, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," replied his niece, hurriedly; "but George has always
got such strange ideas. Don't take no notice of him."

Her uncle sat back in his chair, his face still wrinkled perplexedly;
then the wrinkles vanished suddenly, chased away by a huge glow, and he
rose wrathfully and towered over the match-making Mr. Negget. "How dare
you?" he gasped.

Mr. Negget made no reply, but in a cowardly fashion jerked his thumb
toward his wife.

"Oh! George! How can you say so?" said the latte