“Then that’s where she is. I begin to smell a rat. He took her from Southampton, depend upon it. And now I twig some bit of meaning in that copper saint. The south of France—that’s where she is.”

“But why in the south of France, more than any other part?” I thought that he was jumping rather fast to his conclusions.

“Well, it might be Italy, or Spain,” he answered, with a fine generosity; “I can’t say very much about it. But a brother of mine was at sea, till he was drowned, and he traded a good deal from the south of France; and he had one of those things in his hat, because of being struck by lightning. They get it very bad in those waters, he declared; but I can’t call to mind the name of the saint that stops it. Of course I have no faith in such stuff, though there might be nothing to laugh at, after all I have seen about horses. But there it is. They stick those things up, as an officer’s coachman mounts a cockade; and bad luck it was for Master Downy’s knuckles. His hand was like a pease-pudding yesterday. His flesh is always of a yellow nature, like a Cochin China’s. Shouldn’t wonder a bit, if he got lockjaw.”

“Not till I have settled with him.” It made me forget the Rev. Peter, and all his style of regarding things, when people spoke as if right and wrong had an equal claim upon the Lord in heaven.

CHAPTER LII.
A WANDERING GLEAM.

My uncle, however, was not like that. He had suffered too largely from rogues himself, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, to have any calm way of considering them.

“Either a man is honest through and through, or else he is a thief all over. It is humbug to talk as if a fellow didn’t know when he is stealing, or when he is not. He knows it pretty sharp when it is done to him; and he puts it short, as he has a right to do. And then he turns the corner, and he wipes his mouth, and serves others with the dose that made him sputter. To cheat the man that cheated you, is Christian enough; but not to pass it on to other people. Ask Mr. Golightly what he thinks about it.”

That pious clergyman would scarcely have been satisfied even with my uncle’s view of Christian conduct, although he was moderate in his expectations of us, after all his experience of our doings. This made it very pleasant to be with him frequently; and for my part I am certain that I never could have lasted through all this gloom, and suspense, and indignation, without his example and quiet comfort. All that we had found out, at Shepperton and at Woking, I owed to him, or at any rate to my acquaintance with him; and although it might not seem as yet to carry me much further, still I found some happiness in knowing that little, and hope of learning more from it. And now I went to him about another question, which I could not settle for myself.

It may be remembered that Tabby Tapscott, who came to attend to my uncle’s house, had more than once given me good advice; and some may have set me down as ungrateful for keeping her out of sight since my great disaster, as if she were of no importance. But the real truth is, that I had sought her counsel almost every time I saw her, and had found much comfort from it, because she was so scornful. For the little woman tossed her head, and shot forth her under-lip, as if she could not trust herself to speak, so thoroughly was her mind made up. She looked upon all that had happened as the fruits of a foul conspiracy on the part of man against woman, and she scarcely held me guiltless. And she had no patience with me, because I would not do the proper thing, to find out all about it. Until I did that, she would say no more, but leave me to listen to a set of zanies. Why on earth I refused was more than she could understand; and she went so far as to declare, once or twice, that I could not be in earnest about getting Kitty back, or I would have done it long ago. She herself had known a girl, of Westdown parish in the North of Devon, who found out all about her sweetheart’s murder, and got two men hanged for committing it.