n to the
quicksand. "Look!" she said "Isn't it wonderful? isn't it terrible? I
have seen it dozens of times, and it's always as new to me as if I had
never seen it before!"

I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid
sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then
dimpled and quivered all over. "Do you know what it looks like to ME?"
says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. "It looks as if it had
hundreds of suffocating people under it--all struggling to get to the
surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a
stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck
it down!"

Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an
unquiet mind! My answer--a pretty sharp one, in the poor girl's own
interests, I promise you!--was at my tongue's end, when it was snapped
short off on a sudden by a voice among the sand-hills shouting for me
by my name. "Betteredge!" cries the voice, "where are you?" "Here!"
I shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.
Rosanna started to her feet, and stood looking towards the voice. I was
just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a
sudden change in the girl's face.

Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it
before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless
surprise. "Who is it?" I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own question.
"Oh! who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than to me. I twisted
round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on us from
among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a
beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose
in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set the
Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I could get on my
legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me, put his arm round
my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly squeezed the
breath out of my body. "Dear old Betteredge!" says he. "I owe you
seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know who I am?"

Lord bless us and save us! Here--four good hours before we expected
him--was Mr. Franklin Blake!

Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to all
appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I looked at
the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than