e
overnight."

"And now they're missing?"

"Not a trace of 'em to be seen."

"Someone has been playing you a practical joke, Calvin. Here, stop a
moment--" The Parson ran back to his room, fetched a key, and flung
it out into the yard. "That'll unlock the tool-shed in the garden.
Get what you want, and we'll talk about the theft after breakfast.
How soon will the grave be ready?"

"I can't say sooner than ten o'clock after what has happened."

"Say ten o'clock, then. This is Saturday, and I've my sermon to
prepare after breakfast. At ten o'clock I'll join you in the
churchyard."

II.

My grandfather went off to unlock the tool-shed, and the Parson back
to comfort Mrs. Polwhele--which was no easy matter. "There's
something wrong with the parish since I've been away, and that you
can't deny," she declared. "It don't feel like home any longer, and
my poor flesh is shivering like a jelly, and my hand almost too hot
to make the butter." She kept up this lidden all through breakfast,
and the meal was no sooner cleared away than she slipped on a shawl
and stepped across to the churchyard to discuss the robbery.

The Parson drew a chair to the window, lit his pipe, and pulled out
his pocket-Bible to choose a text for his next day's sermon. But he
couldn't fix his thoughts. Try how he would, they kept harking back
to his travels in the post-chaise, and his wife's story, and those
unaccountable flags and splashes of whitewash. His pipe went out,
and he was getting up to find a light for it, when just at that
moment the garden gate rattled, and, looking down the path towards
the sound, his eyes fell on a square-cut, fierce-looking man in blue,
standing there with a dirty bag in one hand and a sheaf of tools over
his right shoulder.

The man caught sight of the Parson at the window, and set down his
tools inside the gate--shovel and pick and biddicks.

"Good-mornin'! I may come inside, I suppose?" says he, in a gruff
tone of voice. He came up the path and the Parson unlatched the
window, which was one of the long sort reaching down to the ground.

"My name's Bligh," said the visitor, gruff as before. "You're the
Parson, eh? Bit of an antiquarian, I'm given to understand?
These things ought to be in your line, then, and I hope they are not
broken: I carried them as careful as I could." He opened the bag and
emptied it out upon the table--an old earthenware pot, a rusted iron
ring, four or five burnt