living Lord, if you speak another word I'll be your death!"
exclaimed Adam.

"Wa-al, and so you may," exclaimed Jonathan doggedly, "if so be you'll
lave me bide 'til I'se seed the end o' she. Why, what do 'ee mane,
then?" he cried, a sudden suspicion throwing a light on Adam's storm of
indignation. "Her bain't nawthin' to you--her's Jerrem's maid: her
bain't your maid? Why," he added, finding that Adam didn't speak, "'twas
through the letter I carr'ed from he that her'd got it to blab about. I
wishes my hand had bin struck off"--and he dashed it violently against
the wooden bin--"afore I'd touched his letter or his money."

"What letter?" gasped Adam.

"Wa-al, I knaws you said I warn't to take neither wan; but Jerrem he
coaxes and persuades, and says you ain't to knaw nawthin' about it, and
'tain't nawthin' in it, only 'cos he'd a got a letter fra' she to
Guernsey, and this was t' answer; and then I knawed, 'cos I seed em,
that they was sweetheartin' and that, and--"

"Did you give her that letter?" said Adam; and the sound of his voice
was so strange that Jonathan shrank back and cowered close to the wall.

"Iss, I did," he faltered: "leastwise, I gived un to Joan, but t'other
wan had the radin' in it."

There was a pause, during which Adam stood stunned, feeling that
everything was crumbling and giving way beneath him--that he had no
longer anything to live for, anything to hope, anything to fear. As, one
after another, each former bare suggestion of artifice now passed before
him clothed in the raiment of certain deceit, he made a desperate clutch
at the most improbable, in the wild hope that one falsehood at least
might afford him some ray of light, however feeble, to dispel the
horrors of this terrible darkness.

"And after she'd got the letter," he said, "what--what about the rest?"

"Why 'twas this way," cried Jonathan, his eyes rekindling in his
eagerness to tell the story: "somebody dropped a bit of paper into the
rendevoos winder, with writin' 'pon it to say when and where they'd find
the Lottery to. Who 'twas did it none knaws for sartain, but the talk's
got abroad 'twas a sergeant there, 'cos he'd a bin braggin' aforehand
that he'd got a watch-sale and that o' her'n'."

"Her'n?" echoed Adam.

"Iss, o' Eve's. And he's allays a-showin' of it off, he is; and when
they axes un questions he doan't answer, but he dangles the sale afront
of 'em and says, 'What d'ee think?' he says; and now he makes his