?"

"What!"

"Didn't take no clean shirt nor stoggins nor nowt."

"Are you sure of that?" said the bailiff.

"I couldn't make out that anything was gone out of his room, sir," said
old Hannah, clapping her apron to her eyes. "Poor dear: it's very, very
sad."

"Aye, it's sad enough," said old Tummus; "not as it matters much, what's
the good o' going on living?"

"Tummus!" cried his wife.

"Well, what are yow shoutin' at? I say it again: What's the good o'
livin'? You on'y get horrid owd, and your missus allus naggin' you at
home, and your Dan Barnetts shoutin' at you in the garden, or else
Master Ellis here giving it to you about something."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tummus," said his wife. "To go
and say such a thing to Mr Ellis's face, as has allus been a kind
friend to you."

"Aye, lass, I don't grumble much at he, but we'm do grow precious owd."

"And a great blessing too, Tummus," cried his wife. "You don't hear Mr
Ellis complain about getting old."

"Nay, but then he's got a pretty bairn, bless her!--as sweet and good a
lass as ever stepped; and I says that to Master Ellis's face, same as
I've often said it behind his back. Bless her! There!"

James Ellis, with the great care upon his breast--the haunting thought
that perhaps, after all, he had had something to do with John Grange's
disappearance--now stood in old Tummus's cottage a different being.
There was none of the rather pompous, important manner that he was in
the habit of putting on when addressing his inferiors. The faces of
John Grange and Mary seemed to rise before him reproachfully, and, for
the first time in his life, he stood before the old couple in the
cottage a humbled man, hardly conscious of what was being said.

"Then he took nothing away with him, Hannah?" he said at last.

"No, sir, nothing that I can make out."

"Nowt!" said old Tummus. "Here he were, hevving his tea that night,
looking that down sad, that a bad tater was nowt to him; next thing is
as we hears him go out o' the door--that there door just behind wheer
you're a-standing, Mr Ellis, sir, and he didn't come back."

"Didn't come back," said the bailiff, repeating the old man's words.

"We didn't set up for him because we know'd he'd shut oop all right, and
if he didn't nobody wouldn't come and steal our plate, 'cause the owd
woman allus taks it to bed wi' her."

"Tummus!"

"Well, so you do; six silver teaspoons, on'y one was lost years