if we go on to the cottage, we may find out
what that something is?"

At this proposal, my detective fever suddenly
cooled. "You don't want me," I said. "What
good can I do?"

"The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge,"
said the Sergeant, "the more virtues I discover.
Modesty—oh dear me, how rare modesty is in
this world! and how much of that rarity you
possess! If I go alone to the cottage, the
people's tongues will be tied at the first question
I put to them. If I go with you, I go
introduced by a justly respected neighbour, and a
flow of conversation is the necessary result.
It strikes me in that light; how does it strike
you?"

Not having an answer of the needful smartness
as ready as I could have wished, I tried to
gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted
to go to.

On the Sergeant describing the place, I
recognised it as a cottage inhabited by a
fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two
grown-up children, a son and a daughter. If
you will look back, you will find that, in first
presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I
have described her as occasionally varying her
walk to the Shivering Sand, by a visit to some
friends of hers at Cobb's Hole. Those friends
were the Yollands—respectable, worthy people,
a credit to the neighbourhood. Rosanna's
acquaintance with them had begun by means of
the daughter, who was afflicted with a
misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts
by the name of Limping Lucy. The two
deformed girls had, I suppose, a kind of fellow-
feeling for each other. Any way, the Yollands
and Rosanna always appeared to get on
together, at the few chances they had of meeting,
in a pleasant and friendly manner. The fact of
Sergeant Cuff having traced the girl to their
cottage, set the matter of my helping his
inquiries in quite a new light. Rosanna had
merely gone where she was in the habit of
going; and to show that she had been in
company with the fisherman and his family was as
good as to prove that she had been innocently
occupied, so far, at any rate. It would be
doing the girl a service, therefore, instead of an
injury, if I allowed myself to be convinced by
Sergeant Cuff's logic. I professed myself
convinced by it accordingly.

We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the
footsteps on the sand, as long as the light lasted.

On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and
his son proved to be out in the boat; and
Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was
resting on her bed up-stairs. Good Mrs.
Yolland received us alone in her kitchen. When
she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated
character in London, she clapped a bottle of
Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the
table, and stared as if she could never see
enough of him.

I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how
the Sergeant would find his way to the subject
of Rosanna Spearman. His usual roundabout
manner of going to work proved, on this occasion,
to be more roundabout than ever. How
he managed it is more than I could tell at the
time, and more than I can tell now. But this
is certain, he began with the Royal Family, the
Primitive Methodists, and the price of fish;
and he got from that (in his dismal,
underground way) to the loss of the Moonstone, the
spitefulness of our first housemaid, and the
hard behaviour of the women-servants generally
towards Rosanna Spearman. Having reached
his subject in this fashion, he described himself
as making his inquiries about the lost Diamond,
partly with a view to find it, and partly for the
purpose of clearing Rosanna from the unjust
suspicions of her enemies in the house. In
about a quarter of an hour from the time when
we entered the kitchen, good Mrs. Yolland was
persuaded that she was talking to Rosanna's
best friend, and was pressing Sergeant Cuff to
comfort his stomach and revive his spirits out of
the Dutch bottle.

Being firmly persuaded that the Sergeant
was wasting his breath to no purpose on Mrs.
Yolland, I sat enjoying the talk between them,
much as I have sat, in my time, enjoying a
stage play. The great Cuff showed a
wonderful patience; trying his luck drearily this
way and that way, and firing shot after shot, as
it were, at random, on the chance of hitting the
mark. Everything to Rosanna's credit,
nothing to Rosanna's prejudice—that was how it
ended, try as he might; with Mrs. Yolland
talking nineteen to the dozen, and placing the
most entire confidence in him. His last effort
was made, when we had looked at our watches,
and had got on our legs previous to taking
leave.

"I shall now wish you good night, ma'am,"
says the Sergeant. "And I shall only say, at
parting, that Rosanna Spearman has a sincere
well-wisher in myself, your obedient servant.
But, oh dear me! she will never get on in her
present place; and my advice to her is—
leave it."

"Bless your heart alive! she is going to
leave it!" cries Mrs. Yolland. (Nota Bene—I
translate Mrs. Yolland out of the Yorkshire
language into the English language. When I
tell you that the all-accomplished Cuff was every
now and then puzzled to understand her until
I helped him, you will draw your own conclusions
as to what your state of mind would be if
I reported her in her native tongue.)

Rosanna Spearman going to leave us! I
pricked up my ears at that. It seemed strange,
to say the least of it, that she should have
given no warning, in the first place, to my
lady or to me. A certain doubt came up in my
mind whether Sergeant Cuff's last random
shot might not have hit the mark. I began to
question whether my share in the proceedings
was quite as harmless a one as I had thought
it. It might be all in the way of the Sergeant's
business to mystify an honest woman by
wrapping her round in a network of lies; but it was
my duty to have remembered, as a good
Protestant, that the father of lies is the Devil—
and that mischief and the Devil are never far