,--oh!'

'What is it, Mr Crumb?'

'He's a coosin o' yours, squoire; and long as I've known Suffolk, I've
never known nothing but good o' you and yourn. But if your baronite
has been and done this! Oh, Mr Carbury! If I was to wring his neck
round, you wouldn't say as how I was wrong; would ye, now?' Roger
could hardly answer the question. On general grounds the wringing of
Sir Felix's neck, let the immediate cause for such a performance have
been what it might, would have seemed to him to be a good deed. The
world would be better, according to his thinking, with Sir Felix out
of it than in it. But still the young man was his cousin and a
Carbury, and to such a one as John Crumb he was bound to defend any
member of his family as far as he might be defensible. 'They says as
how he was groping about Sheep's Acre when he was last here, a hiding
himself and skulking behind hedges. Drat 'em all. They've gals enough
of their own,--them fellows. Why can't they let a fellow alone? I'll do
him a mischief, Master Roger; I wull;--if he's had a hand in this.' Poor
John Crumb! When he had his mistress to win he could find no words for
himself; but was obliged to take an eloquent baker with him to talk
for him. Now in his anger he could talk freely enough.

'But you must first learn that Sir Felix has had anything to do with
this, Mr Crumb.'

'In coorse; in coorse. That's right. That's right. Must l'arn as he
did it, afore I does it. But when I have l'arned--!' And John Crumb
clenched his fist as though a very short lesson would suffice for him
upon this occasion.

They all went to the Beccles Station, and from thence to the Beccles
Post-office,--so that Beccles soon knew as much about it as Bungay. At
the railway station Ruby was distinctly remembered. She had taken a
second-class ticket by the morning train for London, and had gone off
without any appearance of secrecy. She had been decently dressed, with
a hat and cloak, and her luggage had been such as she might have been
expected to carry, had all her friends known that she was going. So
much was made clear at the railway station, but nothing more could be
learned there. Then a message was sent by telegraph to the station in
London, and they all waited, loitering about the Post-office, for a
reply. One of the porters in London remembered seeing such a girl as
was described, but the man who was supposed to have carried her box
for her to a cab had gone away for the day. It wa