"Certain sure, sir. Nobody carried away anything but mother, who took the peecture, an' you as carried the box and easel."
"Could Miss Brabourne's servant have taken it?" suggested Claud.
"Nay, sir, a think not," said Clapp, "for a stopped to speak to my missus, and she would ha' gi'en her the things if she had 'em."
"Let's go and look!" cried Claud, seizing his hat again.
The sun had set at last—what a long lime it seemed to have taken to-night! The rosy afterglow dyed all the heavens, and the trees were outlined black against it. As they hurried through the Waste, it seemed to the young man as if he had known the neighborhood for years; ages appeared to have elapsed since the afternoon, when he had been soberly driving with Mab along the coach-road, accomplishing the last stage in their pleasant, uneventful ten days' driving-tour. How little he had thought, when he planned that driving-tour for Mab, who had been thoroughly wearied out with an epidemic of whooping-cough in her nursery, that it would lead to consequences such as these. He was profoundly interested in the mysterious circumstances of this affair in which, somehow, he had been made to play such a prominent part. Come what might, he must stay and see it out. Mab might go home if she liked—in fact, he thought she had better telegraph to Edward to come and fetch her. The children were all at Eastbourne with the nurses, and she would have a chance of quiet if she went for a few days to the "mater's" inconvenient dark little house in Provost Street, Park Lane; and——
"Here you are, sirr," said William Clapp, in his broad Devon. "Where's the missus's dishclout?"
In fact, it was not to be seen. They searched for it high and low, in vain. Mr. Cranmer felt as if he were in the toils of that mixture of the ghastly and the absurd which we call nightmare. This last detail was too ridiculous! That a gentleman should be waylaid and murdered on the king's highway, and all for the sake of a blue handkerchief and a pudding-basin! In his mingled feelings of amusement and annoyance, he did not know whether to laugh or be angry—the whole thing was too incredible, too monstrous.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Thy steps are dancing towards the bound
Between the child and woman,
And thoughts and feelings more profound
And other years are coming;
And thou shalt be more deeply fair,
More precious to the heart,
But never canst thou be again
The lovely thing thou art."