! Mother! Uncle! What is this? The gentleman has lost a belt?"

"Dear me!--a belt! Well, child, that's not much to grieve over, when
the Lord has spared his life and soul from the pit!" said her mother,
somewhat testily.

"You don't understand. A belt, I say, full of money--fifteen hundred
pounds; he lost it last night. Uncle! Speak, quick! Did you see a
belt?"

Willis shook his head meditatively. "I don't, and yet I do, and yet
I don't again. My brains were, well-nigh washed out of me, I know.
However, sir, I'll think, and talk it over with you too; for if it be
in the village, found it ought to be, and will be, with God's help."

"Found?" cried Grace, in so high a key, that Tom entreated her to calm
herself, and not make the matter public.--"Found? yes; and shall be
found, if there be justice in heaven. Shame that west-country folk
should turn robbers and wreckers! Mariners, too, and manners' wives,
who should be praying for those who are wandering far away, each man
with his life in his hand! Ah, what a world! When will it end? soon,
too soon, when west-country folk rob shipwrecked men! But you will
find your belt; yes, sir, you will find it. Wait till you have learnt
to do without it. Man does not live by bread alone. Do you think he
lives by gold? Only be patient; and when you are worthy of it, you
shall find it again, in the Lord's good time."

To the doctor this seemed a mere burst of jargon, invented for the
purpose of hiding guilt; and his faith in womankind was not heightened
when he heard Grace's mother say, _sotto voce_ to Willis, that--"In
wrecks, and fires, and such like, a many people complained of having
lost more than ever they had."

"Oh ho! my old lady, is that the way the fox is gone?" quoth Tom to
that trusty counsellor, himself; and began carefully scrutinising Mrs.
Harvey's face. It had been very handsome: it was still very clever:
but the eyebrows, crushed together downwards above her nose, and
rising high at the outer corners, indicated, as surely as the restless
down-dropt eye, a character self-conscious, furtive, capable of great
inconsistencies, possibly of great deceits.

"You don't look me in the face, old lady!" quoth Tom to himself. "Very
well! between you two it lies; unless that old gentleman implicates
himself also, in his approaching confession."

He took his part at once. "Well, well, you will oblige me by saying
nothing more about it. After all, as this good lady says, the