d to no
man save--remotely--the King, whose health she drank sometimes in
port and sometimes in gin-and-water.

"Good morning, Jack! Sorry to cut you over with that off-drive; but
you shouldn't have come in without knocking. Eh? Is that Harry
Brooks?" Her face grew grave for a moment before she turned upon Mr.
Rogers that smile which, if usually latent and at the best not
entirely feminine, was her least dubitable charm. "Now, upon my
word. Jack, you have more thoughtfulness than ever I gave you credit
for."

Mr. Rogers stared at her.

"An hour's knockabout with me will do the child more good than moping
in the house, and I ought to have thought of it myself. Come along,
Harry Brooks, and play me a match at single wicket. Help me push
away the catapult there into the corner. Will you take first
innings, or shall we toss?"

The catapult indicated by Miss Belcher was a formidable-looking
engine with an iron arm or rod terminating in a spoon-shaped socket,
and worked by a contrivance of crank and chain. You placed your
cricket-ball in the socket, and then, having wound up the crank and
drawn a pin which released the machinery, had just time to run back
and defend your wicket as the iron rod revolved and discharged the
ball with a jerk. The rod itself worked on a slide, and could be
shortened or extended to vary the trajectory, and the exercise it
entailed in one way and another had given Miss Belcher's cheeks a
fine healthy glow.

"Whew!" she exclaimed, tucking the bat under her arm and wiping her
forehead with a loose end of her yellow bandana. "I'm feelin' like
the lady in 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; by which I don't mean the one
that stooped to folly, but the one that was all of a muck of sweat."

"My dear Lydia," gasped Mr. Rogers, "we haven't come to play cricket!
Put down your bat and listen to me. There's the devil to pay in this
parish of yours. To begin with, we've found another body--"

"Eh? Where?"

"In the plantation under the slope here--close beside the path, and
about two gunshots off the lane."

"What have you done with it?"

"Two of your fellows are fetching it along. I was going to ask you
as a favour to let it lie here for the time while we follow up the
search."

"Of course you may. But who is it?"

"An old man in sea clothes. Harry knows him; says he hails from
Falmouth, and that his name is Coffin. And we've arrested a young
fellow on suspicion, though I begin to thin