d, involuntarily,
it stopped.

"He's coming to!" I heard Carr say. "Go and fetch some brandy." And I
felt myself turned right side uppermost, and my hands were rubbed,
while Carr, in a voice of the greatest anxiety, asked me how I felt. I
was soon able to sit up, and to become aware that I had a splitting
headache, and was staring at a tallow-candle stuck in a bottle. Having
got so far I got a little farther, and on looking round found myself
reclining on a sack in a corner of a disreputable-looking room, dingy
with dirt, and faithful to the memory of bad tobacco. Then I suddenly
remembered what had occurred. Carr saw that I did so, and instantly
poured forth an account of how we had been rescued from a condition of
great peril by the man to whom the house we were in belonged, to whom he
hardly knew how to express his gratitude, and who was now gone for some
brandy for me. He told me a great deal about it, but I was so dizzy that
I forgot most of what he said, and it was not until our deliverer
returned with the brandy that I became thoroughly aware of what was
going forward. I could not help thinking, as I thanked the honest fellow
who had come to our assistance, how easily one may be deceived by
appearances, for a more forbidding-looking face, under its fur cap, I
never saw. That of his son, who presently returned with a four-wheeler
which Carr had sent for, was not more prepossessing. In fact, they were
two as villanous-looking men as I had ever seen. After recompensing both
with all our spare cash, we got ourselves hoisted stiffly into the cab,
and Carr good-naturedly insisted on seeing me home, though he owned to
feeling, as he put it, "rather knocked up by his knocking down." We were
both far too exhausted to speak much, until Carr gave a start and a gasp
and said, "By Jove!"

"What?" I inquired.

"They are gone!" he said, tremulously--"my sapphires. They are gone!
Stolen! I had them in a bag round my neck, as you told me. They must
have been taken from me when I was knocked down. I say," he added,
quickly, "how about yours? Have you got them all right?"

Involuntarily I raised my hand to my throat. A horrid qualm passed over
me.

"Thank Heaven!" I replied, with a sigh of relief. "They are safe at home
with Jane. What a mercy! I might have lost them."

"_Might!_" said Carr. "You would have lost them to a dead certainty;
mine _are_ gone!" And he stamped, and clinched his fists, and looked
positively furious