ttage."

"What did he say?" asked Jan.

Miss Deborah's pale face turned to crimson. "I can't tell," she said. "I
did not hear the words rightly. Master Cheese caught them up again. Mr.
Jan, I have come to you to tell me."

Jan answered nothing. He was pounding very fiercely.

"Mr. Jan, I ought to know it," she went on. "I am not a child. If you
please I must _request_ you to tell me."

"What are you shivering for?" asked Jan.

"I can't help it. Is--is it anything that--that he can be taken up for?"

"Taken up!" replied Jan, ceasing from his pounding, and fixing his
wide-open eyes on Miss Deborah. "Can I be taken up for doing this?"--and
he brought down the pestle with such force as to threaten the
destruction of the mortar.

"You'll tell me, please," she shivered.

"Well," said Jan, "if you must know it, the doctor had a misfortune."

"A misfortune! He! What misfortune! A misfortune at Chalk Cottage?"

Jan gravely nodded. "And they were in an awful rage with him, and said
he should pay expenses, and all that. And he wouldn't pay expenses--the
chimney-glass alone was twelve pound fifteen; and there was a regular
quarrel, and they turned him out."

"But what was the nature of the misfortune?"

"He set the parlour chimney on fire."

Miss Deborah's lips parted with amazement; she appeared to find some
difficulty in closing them again.

"Set the parlour chimney on fire, Mr. Jan!"

"Very careless of him," continued Jan, with composure. "He had no
business to carry gunpowder about with him. Of course they won't believe
but he flung it in purposely."

Miss Deborah could not gather her senses. "Who won't?--the ladies at
Chalk Cottage?"

"The ladies at Chalk Cottage," assented Jan. "If I saw all these bottles
go to smithereens, through Cheese stowing gunpowder in his trousers'
pockets, I might go into a passion too, Miss Deb."

"But, Mr. Jan--_this_ is not what's being said in Deerham?"

"Law, if you go by all that's said in Deerham, you'll have enough to
do," cried Jan. "One says one thing and one says another. No two are
ever in the same tale. When that codicil was lost at Verner's Pride, ten
different people were accused by Deerham of stealing it."

"Were they?" responded Miss Deborah abstractedly.

"Did you never hear it! You just ask Deerham about the row between the
doctor and Chalk Cottage, and you'll hear ten versions, all different.
What else could be expected? As if he'd take the trouble to ex