What was to be answered?  Perhaps only what Tom did answer.

“My good sir, I will say no more.  I would not have said that much if I had thought I should have pained you so.  I suppose that the belt was washed into the sea.  Why not?”

“Why not, indeed, sir?  That’s a much more Christian-like way of looking at it, than to blacken your own soul before God by suspecting that sweet innocent creature.”

“Be it so, then.  Only say nothing about the matter; and beg them to say nothing.  If it be jammed among the rocks (as it might be, heavy as it is), talking about it will only set people looking for it; and I suppose there is a man or two, even in Aberalva, who would find fifteen hundred pounds a tempting bait.  If, again, some one finds it, and makes away with it, he will only be the more careful to hide it if he knows that I am on the look-out.  So just tell Miss Harvey and her mother that I think it must have been lost, and beg them to keep my secret And now shake hands with me.”

“The best plan, I believe, though bad, is the best,” said Willis, holding out his hand; and he walked away sadly.  His spirit had been altogether ruffled by the imputation on Grace’s character:  and, besides, the chances of Thurnall’s recovering his money seemed to him very small.

In five minutes he returned.

“If you would allow me, sir, there’s a man there of whom I should like to ask one question.  He who held me, and, after that, helped to carry you up;” and he pointed to Gentleman Jan, who stood, dripping from the waist downward, over a chest which he had just secured.  “Just let us ask him, off-hand like, whether you had a belt on when he carried you up.  You may trust him, sir.  He’d knock you down as soon as look at you; but tell a lie, never.”

They went to the giant; and, after cordial salutations, Tom propounded his question carelessly, with something like a white lie.

“It’s no great matter; but it was an old friend, you see, with fittings for my knife and pistols, and I should be glad to find it again.”

Jan thrust his red hand through his black curls, and meditated while the water surged round his ankles.

“Never a belt seed I, sir; leastwise while you were in my hands.  I had you round the waist all the way up, so no one could have took it off.  Why should they?  And I undressed you myself; and nothing, save your presence, was there to get off, but jersey and trousers, and a lump of backy against your skin that looked the right sort.”

“Have some, then,” said Tom, pulling out the honey-dew.  “As for the belt, I suppose it’s gone to choke the dog-fish.”

And there the matter ended, outwardly at least; but only outwardly.  Tom had his own opinion, gathered from Grace’s seemingly guilty face, and to it he held, and called old Willis, in his heart, a simple-minded old dotard, who had been taken in by her hypocrisy.