“She would just have suited me,” says Mr. Franklin.  “I never settle on anything either.  Betteredge, your edge is better than ever.  Your daughter said as much, when I asked for particulars about the jugglers.  ’Father will tell you, sir.  He’s a wonderful man for his age; and he expresses himself beautifully.’  Penelope’s own words—­blushing divinely.  Not even my respect for you prevented me from—­never mind; I knew her when she was a child, and she’s none the worse for it.  Let’s be serious.  What did the jugglers do?”

I was something dissatisfied with my daughter—­not for letting Mr. Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to that—­but for forcing me to tell her foolish story at second hand.  However, there was no help for it now but to mention the circumstances.  Mr. Franklin’s merriment all died away as I went on.  He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard.  When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which the chief juggler had put to the boy—­seemingly for the purpose of fixing them well in his mind.

“’Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English gentleman will travel to-day?’ ’Has the English gentleman got It about him?’ I suspect,” says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper parcel out of his pocket, “that ‘It’ means this.  And ‘this,’ Betteredge, means my uncle Herncastle’s famous Diamond.”

“Good Lord, sir!” I broke out, “how do you come to be in charge of the wicked Colonel’s Diamond?”

“The wicked Colonel’s will has left his Diamond as a birthday present to my cousin Rachel,” says Mr. Franklin.  “And my father, as the wicked Colonel’s executor, has given it in charge to me to bring down here.”

If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand, had been changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I could have been more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin spoke those words.

“The Colonel’s Diamond left to Miss Rachel!” says I.  “And your father, sir, the Colonel’s executor!  Why, I would have laid any bet you like, Mr. Franklin, that your father wouldn’t have touched the Colonel with a pair of tongs!”

“Strong language, Betteredge!  What was there against the Colonel.  He belonged to your time, not to mine.  Tell me what you know about him, and I’ll tell you how my father came to be his executor, and more besides.  I have made some discoveries in London about my uncle Herncastle and his Diamond, which have rather an ugly look to my eyes; and I want you to confirm them.  You called him the ‘wicked Colonel’ just now.  Search your memory, my old friend, and tell me why.”

I saw he was in earnest, and I told him.

Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your benefit.  Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper into the story.  Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not.  Try if you can’t forget politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club.  I hope you won’t take this freedom on my part amiss; it’s only a way I have of appealing to the gentle reader.  Lord! haven’t I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know how ready your attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it, instead of a person?