from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and too buy pigs.
At any other time Oswald would not have been able to bear to leave the
bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he
and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having
meant it--and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but
honourable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.

So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities' house,
and Mr Turnbull was out, but the maid-servant kindly told us where the
President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate
brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.

When they asked, they were told that Mr Longchamps was at home. Then
they waited, paralysed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with
books and swords and glass bookcases with rotten-looking odds and ends
in them. Mr Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to anything,
no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.

He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well,
he said, and asked what he could do for us.

Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own
himself the ass he had been. But Alice was less delicately moulded. She
said--

'Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you'll
forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the
other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing
Roman--so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find.'

'So I perceived,' said the President, stroking his white beard and
smiling most agreeably at us; 'a harmless joke, my dear! Youth's the
season for jesting. There's no harm done--pray think no more about it.
It's very honourable of you to come and apologize, I'm sure.'

His brow began to wear the furrowed, anxious look of one who would
fain be rid of his guests and get back to what he was doing before they
interrupted him.

Alice said, 'We didn't come for that. It's MUCH worse. Those were two
REAL true Roman jugs you took away; we put them there; they aren't
ours. We didn't know they were real Roman. We wanted to sell the
Antiquities--I mean Antiquaries--and we were sold ourselves.'

'This is serious,' said the gentleman. 'I suppose you'd know the--the
"jugs" if you saw them again?'

'Anywhere,' said Oswald, with the confidential rashness of one who does
not know