was in the shop a fortnight ago, and says I to
myself, 'What can the man have let it down like this for--who'd come
here for anything; and it _did_ cross my mind as it was very odd, and I
went home a thinking and a thinking, but of course I never dreamed as
he was so awful wicked as this."

"He was always very peculiar, mother," said the elder Miss Cattle. "Do
you remember, Carry," turning to her younger sister, "how he jumped out
of the hedge that Sunday evening, just as we turned down our lane. Oh
my, I never had such a fright--you might have knocked me down with a
straw; and he never spoke, but walked straight on."

"He might have been nutting," said Giacomo--"he was always going out
nutting; and perhaps he didn't notice he had frightened you."

"Not notice! I am sure he might have done; and then, why did he come
out just then, I should like to know. If he had come out just after
we'd got by, I shouldn't have thought so much of it."

"If the poor man was in the hedge, he must come out at some time, and
it happened to be just then," observed Giacomo reflectively.

"Ah!" continued Carry, incapable of replying to Giacomo's philosophy,
and judiciously changing her attack, "whenever you went to buy anything
he never spoke up to you like--there was always an underhand look about
him; and then his living alone as he did with nobody but that old woman
with him."

"He always sold good leather," continued Mr. Cattle, who planted both
his elbows on the table, and placed his head in his hands in a fit of
abstraction, much perplexed by this apparent contradiction in Cutts's
character.

"Sold good leather," retorted his wife with great sharpness, as if in
contempt of her husband's stupidity; "sold good leather--of course he
did. That was part of his plan to make people believe he was an honest
man. Besides, if he hadn't, how could he have got rid of his stock as
he did. Do you recollect," she proceeded with increasing asperity, as
became a Cowfold matron, "as it was him as got up that petition for
that Catchpool gal as was going to be hanged for putting her baby in
the pond?"

"His father," quoth Mr. Cattle, inclining again to his wife's side,
"had a glass eye, and I've heerd his mother was a Papist."

"Well," interrupted Miriam at last, "what if he did set fire to his
house?"

They all looked amazed. "What if he did! what if he did!" repeated Mr.
Cattle; "why, it's arson, that's all."

"Oh, that's saying the