“‘I’ve got it,’ I says, as we stood in the stable-yard: ‘that boy Shock’s got him on to it, and they’ve gone off to Portsmouth to be sailors.’
“Old Brownsmith’s brother looked at me and shook his head, but I stack to it I was right; and he said he’d go down to Portsmouth and see.
“But he didn’t, for next day he goes over to Isleworth, and as I was coming out of the garden next night he was back, and he stops me and takes me to the cottage.
“‘Good job,’ he says, ‘as Sir Francis ain’t at home, for he thought a deal of that boy.’
“‘Warn’t my fault,’ I says; but he shook his head, and took me in, and there sat Old Brownsmith’s brother’s wife, with a white face and red eyes as if she had been crying, and Old Brownsmith himself.
“Well, he gives me a long talking to, and I told him everything about it; and when I’d done I says again as it warn’t my fault, and Old Brownsmith turns to his brother and he says, as fair as a man could speak, ‘It warn’t his fault, Solomon; and if it’s as he says, Grant’s that sort o’ boy as’ll repent and be very sorry, and if he don’t come back before, you’ll get a letter begging your pardon for what he’s done, or else I shall. You wait a couple of days.’
“I dunno why, but I was reg’lar uncomf’table about you, my lad, and I didn’t understand Juno stopping away so, for next day she was gone again, but next night she was back. Next day she was gone again, and didn’t come back, and on the fourth, when I was down the garden digging—leastwise, I wasn’t digging, for I was leaning on my spade thinking, up comes Old Brownsmith’s brother with his mouth open, and before he could say a word I says to him, ‘Stop!’ I says; ‘I’ve got it,’ for it come to me like a flash o’ lightning.
“‘What?’ he says.
“‘Them boys is in that sand-pit, covered over!’ I says.
“‘That’s it!’ he says. ‘I was coming to say I thought so, and that we’d go over directly.’