anna had merely gone where she
was in the habit of going; and to show that she had been in company with
the fisherman and his family was as good as to prove that she had been
innocently occupied so far, at any rate. It would be doing the girl
a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be
convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic. I professed myself convinced by it
accordingly.

We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as
the light lasted.

On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in
the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her
bed up-stairs. Good Mrs. Yolland received us alone in her kitchen. When
she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she
clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table,
and stared as if she could never see enough of him.

I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would find his
way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman. His usual roundabout manner of
going to work proved, on this occasion, to be more roundabout than ever.
How he managed it is more than I could tell at the time, and more than
I can tell now. But this is certain, he began with the Royal Family, the
Primitive Methodists, and the price of fish; and he got from that
(in his dismal, underground way) to the loss of the Moonstone, the
spitefulness of our first house-maid, and the hard behaviour of the
women-servants generally towards Rosanna Spearman. Having reached his
subject in this fashion, he described himself as making his inquiries
about the lost Diamond, partly with a view to find it, and partly
for the purpose of clearing Rosanna from the unjust suspicions of her
enemies in the house. In about a quarter of an hour from the time when
we entered the kitchen, good Mrs. Yolland was persuaded that she was
talking to Rosanna's best friend, and was pressing Sergeant Cuff to
comfort his stomach and revive his spirits out of the Dutch bottle.

Being firmly persuaded that the Sergeant was wasting his breath to no
purpose on Mrs. Yolland, I sat enjoying the talk between them, much as
I have sat, in my time, enjoying a stage play. The great Cuff showed a
wonderful patience; trying his luck drearily this way and that way, and
firing shot after shot, as it were, at random, on the chance of
hitting the mark. Everything to Rosanna's credit, nothing to Rosanna's
prejudice--that was how it