anklin.

"Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell Miss
Verinder."

"Suppose she does. What then?" Mr. Franklin said those words with a
sudden heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended him.

"Do you think it's wise, sir," said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, "to put such
a question as that to me--at such a time as this?"

There was a moment's silence between them: Mr. Franklin walked close
up to the Sergeant. The two looked each other straight in the face. Mr.
Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had raised
it.

"I suppose you know, Mr. Cuff," he said, "that you are treading on
delicate ground?"

"It isn't the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I find myself
treading on delicate ground," answered the other, as immovable as ever.

"I am to understand that you forbid me to tell my aunt what has
happened?"

"You are to understand, if you please, sir, that I throw up the case, if
you tell Lady Verinder, or tell anybody, what has happened, until I give
you leave."

That settled it. Mr. Franklin had no choice but to submit. He turned
away in anger--and left us.

I had stood there listening to them, all in a tremble; not knowing whom
to suspect, or what to think next. In the midst of my confusion, two
things, however, were plain to me. First, that my young lady was, in
some unaccountable manner, at the bottom of the sharp speeches that had
passed between them. Second, that they thoroughly understood each other,
without having previously exchanged a word of explanation on either
side.

"Mr. Betteredge," says the Sergeant, "you have done a very foolish thing
in my absence. You have done a little detective business on your own
account. For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your
detective business along with me."

He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by
which he had come. I dare say I had deserved his reproof--but I was not
going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman, for all that. Thief
or no thief, legal or not legal, I don't care--I pitied her.

"What do you want of me?" I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.

"Only a little information about the country round here," said the
Sergeant.

I couldn't well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.

"Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from
this house?" asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke, to the