has not the remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey, by men who seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no; and is put through a window to rob a house; and then, just at the very moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the way, a blundering dog of a half-bred butler, and shoots him! As if on purpose to prevent his doing any good for himself! Don't you see all this?”

“I see it, of course,” replied Rose, smiling at the doctor's impetuosity; “but still I do not see anything in it, to criminate the poor child.”

“No,” replied the doctor; “of course not! Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is, always, the one which first presents itself to them.”

Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even greater rapidity than before.

“The more I think of it,” said the doctor, “the more I see that it will occasion endless trouble and difficulty if we put these men in possession of the boy's real story. I am certain it will not be believed; and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will be cast upon it, must interfere, materially, with your benevolent plan of rescuing him from misery.”

“Oh! what is to be done?” cried Rose. “Dear, dear! why did they send for these people?”

“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Maylie. “I would not have had them here, for the world.”

“All I know is,” said Mr. Losberne, at last: sitting down with a kind of desperate calmness, “that we must try and carry it off with a bold face. The object is a good one, and that must be our excuse. The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no condition to be talked to any more: that's one comfort. We must make the best of it; and if bad be the best, it is no fault of ours. Come in!”

“Well, master,” said Blathers, entering the room followed by his colleague, and making the door fast, before he said any more. “This warn't a put-up thing.”

“And what the devil's a put-up thing?” demanded the doctor, impatiently.

“We call it a put-up robbery, ladies,” said Blathers, turning to them, as if he pitied their ignorance, but had a contempt for the doctor's, “when the servants is in it.”

“Nobody suspected them, in this case,” said Mrs. Maylie.

“Wery likely not, ma'am,” replied Blathers; “but they might have been in it, for all that.”

“More likely on that wery account,” said Duff.

“We find it was a town hand,” said Blathers, continuing his report; “for the style of work is first-rate.”

“Wery pretty indeed it is,” remarked Duff, in an under tone.

“There was two of 'em in it,” continued Blathers; “and they had a boy with 'em; that's plain from the size of the window. That's all to be said at present. We'll see this lad that you've got up stairs at once, if you please.”

“Perhaps they will take something to drink first, Mrs. Maylie?” said the doctor: his face brightening, as if some new thought had occurred to him.

“Oh! to be sure!” exclaimed Rose, eagerly. “You shall have it immediately, if you will.”