"But, `gently, sir,' I says; `don't be rash--don't be hasty.' `Hasty!' he says: `I'll report you to Mr Grey. Get out, sir, you're drunk: I can smell rum here.' `And a good thing, too,' I says, `for keeping cold out when you're watching poor-boxes at night in a empty church?' `What?' he says, `what did you say, Purkis?' he says. For answer, sir, I laid a finger solemn-like against one side of my nose, and looks at him out of the corners of my eyes. `Purkis,' he says, `Purkis: you don't mean as you have found it out?' `But I do, sir,' I says; and then I told him all, and he begged my pardon; and then, if he didn't go into fits of delight, hopping about `I always said as it wasn't Pellet,' he kept on saying. Then he danced round the room, with his little bare legs popping out of the bottom of his dressing-gown, and he slapped me on the back over and over again. `Poor old Pellet!' he says; `I'm glad: out and out glad!' Then he called me a trump, which, though it was well meant, didn't sound respectful to a man in my position in life, and beadle of St Runnle's for all the years as I've been. "But I didn't show no temper, sir, for he meant well, as I said before; and he gets out something in an ugly little bottle, as he poured into two of the wretchedest little glasses you ever see; but when you come to taste it, my! it was just like what he called it; `gold water,' he said it was, and he chuckled and danced as he poured it out. 'Pon my word, sir, it was like swallowing melted sovereigns." Tim groaned, but remained patient and motionless. "Then, sir," continued Purkis, "I went away a happy man, promising that I'd be with him next morning--no, it wasn't, though, it was the same morning--to run down with him to see the vicar, as was in the country. "`Do you mean to report me, sir?' I says. `Don't be a fool, Purkis,' he says. `I want you to tell him with your own lips.'" "Tell him what, sir?--tell him what?" said Tim, piteously. "That I'd seen--" "Stop--stop!" exclaimed Tim, imploringly, as if, now that it had come to the point, and he was about to have that which he already knew corroborated, he could not bear it. "I don't think I can quite take it yet; but there!--yes--please go on." "That I'd seen her, sir, as I could swear to, go to the poor-boxes one after another, and take something out, just like Mrs Purkis emptying the till, and then steal off, sir, so still that you could hardly hear her, only for the clicking of the key in the lock, and then she was gone." "_She_ was--_she_ was gone?" faltered Tim. "Yes, sir; she was. Dark as it was, I could make out all I have said; and then it puzzled me that we should never have settled it upon her before, when we found the money missing. But, you see, she was always so prim, and clean, and neat, and respectable." "Always, Mr Purkis, sir," said Tim; "always." "And no one never would have thought it of her," said Purkis.