Charles smiled pleasantly. "Then 't is your duty to make me, Miss Meredith," he replied, folding his arms. "Won't you please take it?" begged Janice, not a little non-plussed by her position, and that Evatt should be a witness of it. "We know it belongs to you, and 't is too valuable for me to--" "How know you that?" questioned the man, still smiling pleasantly. "Because 't was with your clothes when you went in swimming," said Janice, frankly. "Miss Meredith," replied Charles, "the word of a poor devil of a bond-servant can have little value, but I swear to you that that never belonged to me, and that I therefore have no right to it. If it gives you any pleasure, keep it." "That is as good as saying ye stole it," asserted Evatt. Charles smiled contemptuously. "'All are not thieves whom dogs bark at,'" he retorted. "Nor are all of us sneaks and spies," he added, as, turning, he led away the horse toward the stable. "Yon fellow does n't stickle at calling ye names, Miss Meredith," said Evatt. "He has no right to call me a spy," cried the girl, indignantly. "His words deserve no more heed than what he said t'other night at the tavern of ye." "What said he at the tavern?" demanded Janice. "'T is best left unspoken." "I want to know what he said of me," insisted Miss Meredith. "'T would only shame ye." "He--he told of--he did n't tell them I took the miniature?" faltered Janice. Again Evatt bit his lip, but this time to keep from smiling. "Worse than that, my child," he replied. "Why should he insult me?" protested Janice, proudly, but still colouring at the possibility. "Ye do right to suppose it unlikely. Yet 't is so, and while I can hardly hope that my word will be taken for it, his lies to us a moment since prove that he is capable of any untruth." Evatt spoke with such honesty of manner, and with such an apparent lack of motive for inventing a tale, that Janice became doubtful. "He could n't insult me," she said, "for I--I have n't done anything." "'T is certain that he did. Had I but known ye at the time, Miss Janice, he should have been made to swallow his coarse insult. 'T was for that I sought him this morning. Had ye not interrupted us, 't would have fared badly for him." "You were very kind," said Janice, dolefully, beginning, more from his manner than his words, to believe Evatt. "I did n't know there were such bad men in the world. And for him to say it at the tavern, where 't will be all over the county in no time! Was it very bad?" "No one would believe a redemptioner," replied Evatt. "Yet had I the right--" "Marse Meredith send me to tell youse come to breakfast," interrupted Peg from the gateway in the box. "Why!" exclaimed the girl. "It can't be seven."