“A lady left about five minutes ago,” said Robin.

“A tall young lady in a blue costume?”

“Yes.  Miss Schultz.”

Fritzing looked at him with some sternness.  “Sir, what have I to do with Miss Schultz?” he inquired.

“Oh come now,” said the cheerful Robin, “aren’t you looking for her?”

“I am in search of my niece, sir.”

“Yes.  Miss Schultz.”

“No sir,” said Fritzing, controlling himself with an effort, “not Miss Schultz.  I neither know Miss Schultz nor do I care a—­”

“Sir, sir,” interposed the vicar, hastily.

“I do not care a pfenning for any Miss Schultz.”

The vicar looked much puzzled.  “There was a young lady,” he said, “waiting under that tree over there for her uncle who had gone, she said, to see Lady Shuttleworth’s agent about the cottage by the gate.  She said her uncle’s name was Schultz.”

“She said she was Miss Ethel Schultz,” said Robin.

“She said she was staying at Baker’s Farm,” said the vicar.

Fritzing stared for a moment from one to the other, then clutching his hat mechanically half an inch into the air turned on his heel without another word and went with great haste out of the churchyard and down the hill and away up the road to the farm.

“Quaint, isn’t he,” said Robin as they slowly followed this flying figure to the gate.

“I don’t understand it,” said the vicar.

“It does seem a bit mixed.”

“Did he not say his name was Neumann?”

“He did.  And he looked as if he’d fight any one who said it wasn’t.”

“It is hardly credible that there should be two sets of German uncles and nieces in Symford at one and the same time,” mused the vicar.  “Even one pair is a most unusual occurrence.”

“If there are,” said Robin very earnestly, “pray let us cultivate the Schultz set and not the other.”

“I don’t understand it,” repeated the vicar, helplessly.

VII

Symford, innocent village, went to bed very early; but early as it went long before it had got there on this evening it contained no family that had not heard of the arrivals at Baker’s Farm.  From the vicarage the news had filtered that a pretty young lady called Schultz was staying there with her uncle; from the agent’s house the news that a lunatic called Neumann was staying there with his niece; and about supper-time, while it was still wondering at this sudden influx of related Germans, came the postmistress and said that the boy from Baker’s who fetched the letters knew nothing whatever of any one called Schultz.  He had, said the postmistress, grown quite angry and forgotten the greater and by far the better part of his manners when she asked him how he could stand there and say such things after all the years he had attended Sunday-school and if he were not afraid the earth would open and swallow him up,