mbling
before him, pressing her little hands to her breast, and not daring,
apparently, to ask another question.

"Not dead?" she said at length in a low whisper.

"No--no--Miss Letty," replied the man hastily, "Ho! no, not dead, but
goed away; nigh broked her heart when she losted you; git berry sick;
t'ought she was go for die, but she no die. She jis turn de corner and
come round, an' when she git bedder she hoed away."

"Where did she go to?" asked Robin, anxiously.

"To Bumby," said old George.

"To where?"

"Bumby."

"I suppose you mean Bombay?" said Sam.

"Yes, yes--an' me _say_ Bumby."

"Is she alive and well?" asked Robin.

"Don' know," replied old George, shaking his head; "she no write to hold
Geo'gie. Nigh two years since she goed away."

When the excitement of this meeting began to subside, Sam Shipton took
the old Malay aside, and, after prolonged conversation, learned from him
the story, of which the following is the substance.

Mrs Langley was the widow of a gentleman who had died in the service of
Rajah Brooke. Several years before--he could not say exactly how many--
the widow had retired with her only child, Letta, to a little bungalow
on a somewhat out-of-the-way part of the coast which Mr Langley used to
be fond of going to, and called his "shooting-box." This had been
attacked one night by Labuan pirates, who, after taking all that was
valuable, set fire to the house. Mrs Langley had escaped by a back
door into the woods with her old man-servant, George. She had rushed at
the first alarm to Letta's bed, but the child was not there. Letta had
been awake, had heard the advance of the pirate crew, and had gone into
a front room to see who was coming. Supposing that old George must have
taken charge of the child, and hearing him calling to her to come away
quickly, the widow ran out at the back door as the pirates entered by
the front. Too late she found that George had not the child, and she
would have returned to the house, regardless of consequences, if George
had not forcibly restrained her. When George returned at daybreak, he
found the house a smouldering ruin, the pirates gone, and Letta nowhere
to be found.

The shock threw Mrs Langley into a violent fever. She even lost her
reason for a time, and when at last she was restored to some degree of
health, she went away to Bombay without saying to any one what were her
intentions. She could never entirely forgive old Ge