his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified where the
Melburys lived.

"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!"

"If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as
well have come upon anybody else's plate as hers."

"What snail?"

"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate
when I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves
of wintergreen."

"How the deuce did a snail get there?"

"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman
was."

"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have
been!"

"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could
we expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and
caterpillars always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in
that tantalizing way."

"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on
Grace's account.