'And—Mr. Pennycomequick has not been seen?'

'No, ma'am. Miss Cusworth thought there might be a chance he had come back here and was staying talking.'

'He has not been here since he dined with us.'

'He said he was boun' to take a stroll on t' tow-path. I see'd him there. If he's not got off it afore the flood came down he's lost.'

'Lost! Fiddlesticks! I mean—bless my soul.' Mrs. Sidebottom's heart stood still for a moment. What! Jeremiah ripe, and dropped from the tree already. Jeremiah gone down the river with the anges-à-cheval inside him that he had enjoyed so recently.

She ran upstairs and hammered at her son's door. His window looked out on the valley, not into the street, and he had not been roused at the same time as his mother. As she ran, the thought came to her uncalled, like temptations, 'I needn't have had champagne at six-and-six. It does not matter after all that the sheet and the tablecloth changed places. I might just as well have had cheap grapes.'

'Lamb!' she called through the door, 'Lamb! Do get up. Your uncle is drowned. Slip into your garments. He has been swept away by the flood. Don't stay to shave, you shaved before dinner; and your prayers can wait. Do come as quickly as possible. Not a minute is to be lost.'

She opened his door, and saw her son with a disordered head and sleepy eyes, stretching himself. He had tumbled out of his bed and into his dressing-gown. There was gas in the room, turned down to a pea when not required for light; and this the captain, when roused, had turned up again.

'Oh, Lamb! Do bestir yourself! Do you hear that your uncle is dead, and that he has been carried away by a flood? It is most advisable that we should be in his house before the Cusworths or the servants have made away with anything. These are the critical moments, when things disappear and cannot be traced afterwards. No one but the Cusworths know what he had, there may be plate and jewellery that belonged to his mother. I cannot tell. We do not know what money there is in the house, and what securities he has in his strong box. My dear Lamb! Yes, brush your hair, and don't look stupid. You may lose a great deal by lack of promptitude. Of course we must be in charge. The Cusworths have no locus standi. I shall dismiss them at the earliest convenience. Good gracious me, what things you men are! If you go to bed you get frouzy and rumpled in a way women never do. I have noticed, in crossing the Channel, how a man who gets sea-sick breaks up altogether and becomes disreputable; whereas a woman may have been ten times as ill, yet when she steps ashore she is decent and presentable. I can wait for you no longer. I shall go on by myself. When you are ready, follow.'

Mrs. Sidebottom ran back to her room, and was equipped to start in an incredibly short time. When she again came forth she looked into her son's room once more, and said, 'I do hope and trust, Lamb; that your uncle took his keys with him. It would be too frightful to suppose that he had left them behind, and that these Cusworths should have had the house to themselves and the keys all this while.'