ten those two men whom we caught hanging about Browndown
yesterday?"

He smiled. I had recalled to him a humourous association--nothing more.

"It was not we who caught them," he said. "It was that strange child.
What do you say to my having Jicks to sleep in the house and take care of
me?"

"I am not joking," I rejoined. "I never met with two more ill-looking
villains in my life. The window was open when you were telling me about
the necessity for melting the plates again. They may know as well as we
do, that your gold and silver will be returned to you after a time."

"What an imagination you have got!" he exclaimed. "You see a couple of
shabby excursionists from Brighton, who have wandered to Dimchurch--and
you instantly transform them into a pair of housebreakers in a conspiracy
to rob and murder me! You and my brother Nugent would just suit each
other. His imagination runs away with him, exactly like yours."

"Take my advice," I answered gravely. "Don't persist in sleeping at
Browndown without a living creature in the house with you."

He was in wild good spirits. He kissed my hand, and thanked me in his
voluble exaggerated way for the interest that I took in him. "All right!"
he said, as he opened the gate. "I'll have a living creature in the house
with me. I'll get a dog."

We parted. I had told him what was on my mind. I could do no more. After
all, it might be quite possible that his view was the right one, and mine
the wrong.

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

Second Appearance of Jicks

FIVE more days passed.

During that interval, we saw our new neighbor constantly. Either Oscar
came to the rectory, or we went to Browndown. Reverend Finch waited, with
a masterly assumption of suspecting nothing, until the relations between
the two young people were ripe enough to develop into relations of
acknowledged love. They were already (under Lucilla's influence)
advancing rapidly to that point. You are not to blame my poor blind girl,
if you please, for frankly encouraging the man she loved. He was the most
backward man--viewed as a suitor--whom I ever met with. The fonder he
grew of her, the more timid and self-distrustful he became. I own I don't
like a modest man; and I cannot honestly say that Mr. Oscar Dubourg, on
closer acquaintance, advanced himself much in my estimation. However,
Lucilla understood him, and that was enough. She was determined to have
the completest possible image of him in her mind. Eve