before my arrival the strange object had been found, with the boy whom I had first seen, wandering in the garden.  He was apprehended for a thief, brought into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot.  Commiseration then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business was.  He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had been unsatisfactory and vague.  When I entered the room, the doctor gave me a slight recognition, and proceeded at once to a further examination of the stripling.

“Where did you pick him up, Sir?” enquired the Doctor.

“Mother sent me out a-begging with him,” answered the gypsy boy.

“Who is your mother?”

“Mabel.”

“Mabel what?”

“Mabel nothing.”

“Where does she live, then?”

“She doesn’t live nowhere.  She’s a tramper.”

“Where is she now?”

“How can I tell?  We shall pick up somewhere.  Let me go, and take Silly Billy with me.  I shall get such a licking if I don’t.”

“Is his name Billy?”

“No, Silly Billy, all then chaps as is fools are called Silly Billy.  You know that, don’t you?  Oh, I say, do let’s go now, there’s good fellows!”

“Wait a moment, boy—­not so fast.  How long have you been acquainted with this unfortunate?”

“What, Silly Billy?  Oh, we ain’t very old friends!  I only see’d him yesterday.  He came up quite unawares to our camp whilst we were grubbing.  He seemed very hungry, so mother gave him summut, and made him up a bed—­and she means to have him.  So she sent me out this morning a-begging with him, and told me she’d break every gallows bone I’d got, if I did not bring him back safe.  I say, now I have told all, let us go—­there’s a good gentleman!  I’m quite glad he is going to live with us.  It’s so lucky to have a Silly Billy.”

“How is it, you young rascal, you didn’t tell me all this before?  What do you mean by it?

“Why, it isn’t no business of your’n.  Let us go, will you?”

“Strange,” said Doctor Mayhew, turning to his butler—­“Strange, that they should leave that ring upon his finger—­valuable as it looks.”

“Oh, you try it on, that’s all!  Catch mother leaving that there, if she could get it off.  She tried hard enough, I can tell you and I thought he’d just have bitten her hand off.  Wasn’t he savage neither, oh cry!  She won’t try at it again in a hurry.  She says it serves her right, for no luck comes of robbing a Silly Billy.”

The servants, who betrayed a few minutes before great anxiety and apprehension, were perfectly overcome by this humorous sally, and burst, with on accord, into the loudest laughter.  The generally jocose doctor, however, looked particularly serious, and kept his eye upon the poor idiot with an expression of deep pity.  “Will he not speak?” he asked, still marking his unhappy countenance bereft of every sign of sensibility.