d look here, Ike,
if you've let that boy come to harm I'll never forgive you.'

"`Why, I'd sooner come to harm myself,' I says. `It's larks, that's
what it is.'

"`Well,' he says, `I'll wait till twelve o'clock, and if they're not
back then you must come along with me and find 'em, for there is
something wrong.'

"I never cared a bit about you, my lad, but I couldn't sleep no more,
and I couldn't touch a bit o' breakfast; and when twelve o'clock came,
Mrs Old Brownsmith's brother's wife had been at me with a face as white
as noo milk, and she wanted us to go off before.

"We was off at twelve, though, in the light cart and with a fresh horse;
and though I expected to see you every minute along the road, we got
back to the public, and asked for you, and found that you hadn't been
seen.

"Then we put up the hoss and went and looked about the sand-pits, and
could see nothing of you there, and we didn't see nothing of the dog.
Then we went over the common and searched the wood, and there was no
sign.

"Then back we was at the sand-pits, and there was the sand everywhere,
but nothing seemed to say as it had fallen down. There was some holes,
and we looked in all of 'em, but we couldn't tell that any of 'em had
filled up. Last of all, it was getting dark, when we heard a whine, and
saw Juno come out of the fir-wood on the top with a rabbit in her mouth.

"But that taught us nothing, and we coaxed her down to the public again,
and drove home.

"`I've got it,' I says, as we stood in the stable-yard: `that boy
Shock's got him on to it, and they've gone off to Portsmouth to be
sailors.'

"Old Brownsmith's brother looked at me and shook his head, but I stack
to it I was right; and he said he'd go down to Portsmouth and see.

"But he didn't, for next day he goes over to Isleworth, and as I was
coming out of the garden next night he was back, and he stops me and
takes me to the cottage.

"`Good job,' he says, `as Sir Francis ain't at home, for he thought a
deal of that boy.'

"`Warn't my fault,' I says; but he shook his head, and took me in, and
there sat Old Brownsmith's brother's wife, with a white face and red
eyes as if she had been crying, and Old Brownsmith himself.

"Well, he gives me a long talking to, and I told him everything about
it; and when I'd done I says again as it warn't my fault, and Old
Brownsmith turns to his brother and he says, as fair as a man could
speak, `It warn't his fault, Solomon; a