"I don’t believe I should mourn the theft of all the money I have in the house as I do that of the watch," said Madelaine, as for the twentieth time she hunted in every likely and unlikely place in hopes that she might absently have laid it down somewhere the night before. "That which my dear husband always wore, and which was sent to me after he was dead! It may be silly of me, but the face of that watch seemed to me as the face of a friend. It comforted me when I looked at it, and made me feel nearer my lost one than anything else." As for Robin, he was inconsolable. To think that his beloved Lily and Snowball should have been carried off! His two special pets who were so tame they would follow him all round the garden and eat out of his hand! It was too dreadful to think that their pretty sleek necks had been wrung, and that they would be plucked and eaten like any common barndoor fowl. Such a possibility had never before entered his head. To him they were only the beautiful creatures which the good God had created for his special joy. It is to be feared that the disappearance of the missionary-box sank into comparative insignificance beside this larger grief. It was vain to recount their woes to the stolid village policeman who came pompously to enquire and make elaborate notes of all. "He’s been a clever fellow, that!" was the verdict. "But whoever he is, he’s got clear away, and left no clue either. It’s a mystery, m’am, and a mystery it will remain for ever." "It’s a pity I’ve just come a few days too late," said Benjamin Green, old Timothy’s son, as he sat taking a glass at the "Bull Inn," the Saturday after the burglary. "Hopeless stick-in-the-muds you are in this out-of-the-way place. If you want to be wakened up it’s to America you should go, where I’ve been all these years. Away there, they’d have hunted the scapegrace out in no time, aye, and strung him up on the nearest tree too, for daring to rob widows and children in that heartless manner. If only I’d been here in time, I bet you I’d have found him for you! It’s just my luck only to have arrived to-day." "Have you been up to see your old father yet, Green?" asked one of the men. "No," answered Ben. "I thought I’d fortify myself here before setting out for the affecting interview. It’s not every day that a long-lost son returns home, and I always feel the better for a dram." "What be you a-going to do with him, now you’ve come back?" continued his questioner. "Be you going to leave him to tumble over the crag along with the house, or be you going to make him move, and take Squire Field’s offer before it be too late?" "What offer is that?" asked Ben. "I haven’t heard of it before."