"Then you are quite certain to have her tight. I might trust you for every precaution, Luke. But how have you managed to keep them so quiet, while the neighbourhood was alive with it? And in what corner of the world have you got them? And who was the poor girl that really did die?" "One question at a time, if you please, Miranda, though they all hang pretty much upon one hook. I have kept them so quiet, because they are in a corner of a world where no one goes; in a lonely cottage at the furthest extremity of the old Stow Wood, where their nearest road is a timber-track three-quarters of a mile away. They are waited on by a deaf old woman, who believes them to be Americans, which accounts to her mind for any oddness. Their washing is done at home, and all their food is procured through Cripps the swine-herd, whose forest farm lies well away, so that none of his children go to them. Cripps is indebted to me, and I hold a mortgage of every rod of his land, and a bill of sale of his furniture and stock. He dare not play traitor and claim the reward, or I should throw him into prison for forgery, upon a little transaction of some time back. Moreover, he has no motive; for I have promised him the same sum, and his bill of sale cancelled, when the wedding is happily celebrated. Meanwhile he is making fine pickings out of me, and he caters at a profit of cent. per cent. There is nobody else who knows anything about it, except a pair of gipsy fellows, too wide awake to come near the law for any amount of guineas. One of them is old Kershoe, the celebrated horse-stealer, whom I employed to drive and horse the needful vehicle from London. He knew where to get his horses without any postmaster being the wiser, and his vehicle was a very tidy carriage, bought by the gipsies for a dwelling-place, and furbished up so that the chaises of the age are not to be compared with it. The inquiries made at all livery-stables, and posting-houses, and so on, by order of Overshute and the good Squire, and some of them through my own agency, have afforded me genial pleasure and some little share of profit." "Really, my dear," said Mrs. Sharp; "you were scarcely right in charging for them. You should have remembered that you knew all about it." "That was exactly what I did, my dear; and I felt how expensive that knowledge was. As a little set-off against the pig-master's bills, I made heavy entries against the good Squire. The fault is his own. He should not have driven me into costly proceedings by that lowest of all things the arrogance of birth. Well, the other gipsy man is no other than Joe Smith, who jumped the broomstick with the lovely Princess Cinnaminta. You must have heard of her, Miranda. Half the ladies in Oxford were most bitterly jealous of her, some years back." "I am sure then that I never was, Mr. Sharp!--a poor creature sitting under sacks, and doing juggling!"