“Glad to see you, Kit,” said my uncle, who was getting, with the aid of a pipe, into his right mind. “You are looking ever so much better, my boy. Can’t return the compliment, I fear. The fact is, I have been a little put out; though I never lost my temper, as most people would have done. Fearful smash this morning at the Garden. But all the poor fellows did their very best, and it would not be fair to punish them. They’ve been hard at it, ever since three o’clock. You might take the four-gallon can, if you like, just to show them that you are come home again. And I daresay you’ll be glad of a glass yourself, for the roads are getting dusty. You can come and talk to me, when you’ve been round. Only half a pint each for the women, mind. It would never do to get them into bad habits. Unless any of them has a baby.” When I had discharged that little duty, I told him of all that my aunt had said, and showed him the message to me in the book, if indeed it could be called a message. He shook his head very wisely over this, and told me that he must think about it; for he could not at present see the meaning of it. But I saw that it altered his opinion of the case. “You have been up to the cottage already, I see,” he continued, as I sat quietly, after vainly searching once more the columns of his paper the _Standard_, as I daily did; “you will never find any notice there, my boy, nor in any other paper. It is the blackest puzzle I ever came across; and this only makes it the blacker. Mother Bull is come back”—he should have said, “the Honourable Mrs. Bulwrag Fairthorn”—“I was told so yesterday by that good woman, who came down when you were so ill. You know the woman I mean—Mrs. Wilcox. She was down here yesterday to ask for you, and was very sorry not to find you. She said that if Mother Bull had not been away, she could have sworn that it was all her doing. But now she doubts whether she knew anything about it; for when she does a thing, she always does it by herself, and never trusts any one with her wicked works. Mrs. Wilcox has not heard a word from your wife, as I need not tell you; but she flies in a fury at the smallest hint that there can be any fault on her part. She says that poor Kitty could never plot anything, even if she wished it. Her mind is too simple, and she could never carry out any plan requiring sharp management. I asked her what she thought of it all, and she could think of nothing at all worth speaking of. Only that there is something we don’t know—which I could have told her, without walking a mile. But I think it might do you good to go and see her; and it would comfort you at any rate, for she holds all your own opinions. And she said one thing which I thought right, and sharper of her than I expected, for it never had occurred to me—that you should take in one of those scientific journals, which give an account of discoveries and all that; so as to find out, if you can, where Professor Fairthorn is.”