The boy's cries soon brought several of the domestics of the establishment together. Sally rushed out of her kitchen inquiring what Colin had done to be ducked. “Spying after the secrets of other people!” exclaimed the wrathful Mr. Palethorpe. “Spying!” echoed the maid. “Yes, spying!” added Miss Sowersoft, in corroboration of Palethorpe's statement. “We have caught him out, according to his own confession, in spying after the secrets of everybody about the premises, and sending it all in writing to his mother!” “Ay! I'd souse him well!” observed Sally, who began to fear that some of her own secret interviews with Abel had very probably been registered in black and white, for the edification of the good people of Bramleigh. “What has he been a-gate of?” asked Abel, who had come up just in time to catch the end of the above conversation. “Oh, he's been watching you come into the dairy when I was there!” added Sally, accompanying her remark with a broad simper, and a sly blushing glance at Abel, which caused Abel to shuffle on his feet, and dangle his legs about, as though at a loss what to do with them. “Then a sheep-washing will do him no harm for sheep's eyes,” rejoined Abel, rounding off his sharp-pointed wit with a broad laugh. When the ducking was concluded, they drove him, bruised, drenched, and weeping, into the kitchen. Old George, who had been a distant and silent spectator of the scene, stood at the door as he entered. “Ay, poor boy!” said he, pityingly, as the child passed by him, “they'd more need to nurse him by the fireside than half drown him this way. It's sad wages--sad wages, indeed, for a nest-babe like him! But they don't heed what I say. I'm an old man, and have no right to speak.” Miss Sowersoft seized the earliest opportunity she could to place Colin's letter upon the fire, which she did with a spoonful of salt upon it, in order that its flames should be of the same colour as its contents. In the mean time Colin had shuffled off his mortal coil of wet clothes, and in a moist skin gone silently off to bed. At supper-time old George carried him up the pint of warm ale which had been served out for himself. Colin accepted it, less because he relished it, than because he knew not how at that moment to refuse the hand by which it was offered; and within ten minutes afterwards, notwithstanding all his troubles, he fell into a sound state of repose. CHAPTER XIV. _The benefits of being soused in a horse-trough.--Some farther specimens of Miss Sowersoft's moral excellence.--An unlooked-for discovery is partially made, which materially concerns Miss Fanny Woodruff and Dr. Rowel._