annot, Thomas," she said. "Oh, do _you_ open
it, and read it out," she added imploringly.

"Well, I don't know," replied her brother; "I feel just now more like a
cry-baby than a grown man. Shall we ask our kind friend the vicar to
open it and read it out for us?"

"O yes, yes," cried Jane, "if he will be so good."

"With pleasure, dear friends," said Mr Maltby, and he held out his hand
for the dingy-looking letter.--Little did the writer imagine, when he
penned that wretched scrawl, what a value it would have in the eyes of
so many interested and anxious hearers. It was as follows:--

"Dear Jane Bradly,

"I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope
you'll forgive me for all I've done, for I've behaved shameful to you,
and I don't mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning.
It were all of that lady's-maid. I wish I'd never set eyes on her,
that I do.

"Well, you know as we couldn't either of us a-bear you, because you
knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing
wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn't at all easy; but
Georgina wouldn't let me rest till we had got you out of the house.
And so she took one of her ladyship's bracelets and hid it away, and
made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn't find it; and then we
got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.

"We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own
way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in
telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer's
for things she'd never had. So, when Georgina got herself into
trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn't going to
stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to
take herself off. That was about two years after you had left
Monksworthy.

"When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn't feel at all
comfortable about the hand I'd had in your going, and I couldn't get
what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor
night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got
Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet
was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer
in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn't often
go to, and there it were left, and I never seed i