which I had never seen in it before; she brightened
all over with a kind of speechless and
breathless surprise. " Who is it?" I asked.
Rosanna gave me back my own question. " Oh!
who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than
to me. I twisted round on the sand, and looked
behind me. There, coming out on us from
among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman,
dressed in a beautiful fawn-coloured suit,
with gloves and hat to match, with a rose in his
button-hole, and a smile on his face that might
have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling at
him in return. Before I could get on my legs,
he plumped down on the sand by the side of
me, put his arm round my neck, foreign fashion,
and gave me a hug that fairly squeezed the
breath out of my body. " Dear old Betteredge!"
says he. "I owe you seven and sixpence.
Now do you know who I am?"

Lord bless us and save us! Here—four
good hours before we expected him—was Mr.
Franklin Blake!

Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin,
a little surprised to all appearance, look up
from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I
looked at the girl too. She was blushing of a
deeper red than ever; seemingly at having
caught Mr. Franklin's eye, and she turned and
left us suddenly, in a confusion quite
unaccountable to my mind, without either making
her curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word
to me—very unlike her usual self: a civiller
and better-behaved servant, in general, you
never met with.

"That's an odd girl," says Mr. Franklin.
"I wonder what she sees in me to surprise her?"

"I suppose, sir," I answered, drolling on our
young gentleman's continental education, " it's
the varnish from foreign parts."

I set down here Mr. Franklin's careless
question, and my foolish answer, as a consolation
and encouragement to all stupid people—
it being, as I have remarked, a great satisfaction
to our inferior fellow-creatures to find that
their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than
they are. Neither Mr. Franklin, with his
wonderful foreign training, nor I, with my age,
experience, and natural mother-wit, had the ghost of
an idea of what Rosanna Spearman's unaccountable
behaviour really meant. She was out of
our thoughts, poor soul, before we had seen the
last flutter of her little grey cloak among the
sand-hills. And what of that? you will ask,
naturally enough. Read on, good friend, as
patiently as you can, and perhaps you will be
as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when
I found out the truth.

CHAPTER V.

THE first thing I did, after we were left
together alone, was to make a third attempt to
get up from my seat on the sand. Mr. Franklin
stopped me.

"There is one advantage about this horrid
place, he said; " we have got it all to ourselves.
Stay where you are, Betteredge; I have
something to say to you."

While he was speaking, I was looking at him,
and trying to see something of the boy I
remembered, in the man before me. The man
put me out. Look as I might, I could see no
more of his boy's rosy cheeks than of his boy's
trim little jacket. His complexion had got
pale: his face, at the lower part, was covered,
to my great surprise and disappointment, with
a curly brown beard and moustachios. He had
a lively touch-and-go way with him, very pleasant
and engaging, I admit; but nothing to compare
with his free-and-easy manners of other times.
To make matters worse, he had promised to be
tall, and had not kept his promise. He was
neat, and slim, and well made; but he wasn't
by an inch or two up to the middle height. In
short, he baffled me altogether. The years that
had passed had left nothing of his old self,
except the bright, straightforward look in his eyes.
There I found our nice boy again, and there I
concluded to stop in my investigation.

"Welcome back to the old place, Mr. Franklin,"
I said. "All the more welcome, sir, that
you have come some hours before we expected
you."

"I have a reason for coming before you
expected me," answered Mr. Franklin. " I
suspect, Betteredge, that I have been followed and
watched in London, for the last three or four
days; and I have travelled by the morning
instead of the afternoon train, because I wanted
to give a certain dark-looking stranger the
slip."

Those words did more than surprise me.
They brought back to my mind, in a flash,
the three jugglers, and Penelope's notion that
they meant some mischief to Mr. Franklin
Blake.

"Who's watching you, sir—and why?" I
inquired.

"Tell me about the three Indians you have
had at the house to-day," says Mr. Franklin,
without noticing my question. "It's just
possible, Betteredge, that my stranger and your
three jugglers may turn out to be pieces of the
same puzzle."

"How do you come to know about the
jugglers, sir?" I asked, putting one question on the
top of another, which was bad manners, I own.
But you don't expect much from poor human,
nature—so don't expect much from me.

"I saw Penelope at the house," says Mr.
Franklin; " and Penelope told me. Your
daughter promised to be a pretty girl, Betteredge,
and she has kept her promise. Penelope
has got a small ear and a small foot. Did the
late Mrs. Betteredge possess those inestimable
advantages?"

"The late Mrs. Betteredge possessed a good
many defects, sir," says I. " One of them (if
you will pardon my mentioning it) was never
keeping to the matter in hand. She was more
like a fly than a woman: she couldn't settle on
anything."

'" She would just have suited me," says Mr.
Franklin. " I never settle on anything either.
Betteredge, your edge is better than ever. Your