zing half-way through the
answer, and wakening to some fresh inquiry; once it was--'And did the old
sinner take any notice of you?'

'The prisoner?'

'Nonsense. Old Raymond. Of course he was in the chair.'

'He was very kind. It was he who came home from the hunt with us the
other day.'

'Ha! I said it was some old woman of a spy, wanting to get up a story
against me!'

'Nay, I think he felt kindly, for he talked of Lady Raymond calling, and
my spending a day at Moorcroft.'

'Oh! so the godly mean to rescue you, do they?'

'I did not accept. Perhaps they will never think of it again.'

'No; his ladies will not let him!' sneered Mervyn.

Nevertheless, his last words that night were, 'So the Raymonds have asked
you!'

He was in a more satisfactory state the next day; feeble, but tamed into
endurance of medical treatment, and almost indifferent about the robbery;
as though his passion were spent, and he were tired of the subject.
However, the police were alert. The man whom they had taken up was a
squatter in the forest, notorious as a poacher and thief, and his horse
and cart answered to Phoebe's description of the shadow. He had been
arrested when returning with them from the small seaport on the other
side of the forest in the next county, and on communicating with the
authorities there, search at a dealer's in marine stores had revealed
hampers filled with the Beauchamp plate, as yet unmelted. The spoils of
lesser bulk had disappeared with Smithson and the other criminal.

CHAPTER XX

_Mascarille_.--Oh! oh! je ne prenois pas garde;
Tandis que sans songer a mal, je vous regarde
Votre oeil en tapinois me derobe mon coeur,
Au voleur! au voleur! au voleur! au voleur!

_Cathos_.--Ah! voila qui est pousse dans le dernier galant!

_Les Precieuses Ridicules_

The detective arrived, looking so entirely the office clerk as to take in
Mervyn himself at first sight; and the rest of the world understood that
he was to stay till their master could go over the accounts with him. As
housekeeper's room company, his attentions were doubly relished by the
housemaids, and jealousy was not long in prompting the revelation that
Jane Hart had been Smithson's sweetheart, and was supposed to have met
him since his dismissal. Following up this trail, the detective proved
to his own satisfaction that she had been at a ball at a