gloomy as a fowl on a wet day, and he was as surprised
as me at getting a letter with a London postmark, and registered
too; and he was that surprised that he kept turning it over and
over, and wondering who it could have come from, till we thought it
would be the best way to open and see, and we did.

'Well, I'm blowed!' says Harry; and then he read it out to me. It
was--

'MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have seen in the papers the melancholy account
of our poor father's decease, and the disastrous circumstances of
his second marriage; and the more I have thought of it, the more it
seems to me that there was a screw loose somewhere. I had the
misfortune, as you know, to offend him by my choice of a profession;
but you will be glad to hear that I have risen from P.C. to
detective-sergeant, and am doing well.

'I have made a few inquiries about the movements of our lamented
father and Mrs. Blake on the day when they were united, and if the
same will be agreeable to you, I will come down Sunday morning and
talk matters over with you.--I remain, my dear brother, your
affectionate brother,

JOHN.

'_P.S._ I shall register the letter to make sure. Telegraph if
you would like me to come.'

Well, we telegraphed, though mother doesn't hold with such things,
looking on it as flying in the face of Providence and what's
natural. But we got it all in, with the address, for sixpence, and
Harry was as pleased as Punch to think of seeing his brother again.
But mother said she doubted if it would bring a blessing. And on the
Sunday morning John came.

He was a very agreeable, gentlemanly man, with such manners as you
don't see in Littlington--no, nor in Polegate neither,--and very
changed from the boy with the red cheeks as used to come past our
house on his way to school when he was very little.

Harry met him at the station and brought him home, and when he come
in he kissed me like a brother, and mother too, and he said--

'The best good of trouble, ma'am, is to show you who your friends
really are.'

'Ah,' says mother, 'I doubt if all the detectives in London, asking
your pardon, Master John, can set Master Harry up in his own again.
But he's got a pair of hands, and so has my Polly, and he might have
chosen worse, though I says it.'

Now, after dinner, when I'd cleared away, nothing would serve but I
must go out with the two of them. So we went out, and walked up on
to the Downs for quietness' sake, and it was a warm day