In the matter of the secretaryship Marian was firmness itself. "Cobbler" Horn wished her to give it up; and Miss Jemima was shocked at the idea that she should propose to retain it for a single day. But she dismissed their remonstrances with a fine scorn. What did they take her for? Was she any less fit for the post of secretary than she had been before? Her duties had been a pleasure from the first; they would afford her greater delight than ever now. And why should they bring in a stranger to pry into their affairs? They might give her more salary, if they liked--and here she laughed merrily; but she wasn't going to give up the work she liked more than anything else in the world. One perplexing question yet remained unsolved--What had happened to Marian between the day when she had left home and the time when she had been found by Mr. and Mrs. Burton? The girl's own vague memories of that unhappy period, together with the condition in which she had been found, indicated that she had fallen into the hands of bad characters of some kind. Was the mystery ever to be fully solved? To this question the course of events brought very speedily a complete reply. One evening, about a fortnight after the last-recorded events, an elderly tramp was sitting against a haystack upon some farm premises, at no great distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or, allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded and unwell. The day had been very warm, and the man was eating, with no great appetite, a sumptuous supper of German sausage and bread. The sausage had been wrapped in a piece of newspaper, which spread out upon his knees, was now doing duty as a tablecloth. Having finished his meal, the man lazily glanced at the paper; but finding its contents, at first, to possess no particular interest, he was about to crumple it up and throw it away, when his eye lighted on a paragraph which induced him to pause. He smoothed out the paper, and raised it nearer to his eyes. "Well," he muttered, "I ain't much of a scholard; but I means to get to the bottom o' this 'ere."