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.