“You saw it?” I exclaimed.

“Just as good as saw it,” he returned.  “Else why should he talk about his ‘twenty minutes past’ and about his having no watch to tell the time by?  Twenty minutes!  He don’t usually cut his time so fine as that.  If he comes to half-hours, it’s as much as he does.  Now, you see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it.  I think she gave it him.  Now, what should she give it him for?  What should she give it him for?”

He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on, appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his mind.

“If time could be spared,” said Mr. Bucket, “which is the only thing that can’t be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman; but it’s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present circumstances.  They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that ill uses her through thick and thin.  There’s something kept back.  It’s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.”

I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.

“It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it, “that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go.  It don’t come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the cards.  Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don’t see my way to the usefulness of it at present.  No!  So far our road, Miss Summerson, is for’ard—­straight ahead—­and keeping everything quiet!”

We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.  The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we were on the road again in a few minutes.

It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard.  The air was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall that we could see but a very little way in any direction.  Although it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned—­with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells —­under the hoofs of the horses into mire and water.  They sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them.  One horse fell three times in this first stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.