"What's the matter with your hand?" asked Mr. Morpeth, observing that her right hand was rolled in a comer of her red saree. "Let me see it!" The small brown hand was obediently held out, showing swollen and bleeding fingers. Little chips of wood, of which some fragments remained, had been pushed under the nails, lacerating the flesh. "H'm, torture! Just as I suspected!" muttered Mr. Morpeth. "Who did this?" "Butler done take me into godown make me 'fess. When I no 'fess, he make fingers plenty sore"; and again the child burst into convulsive sobs. Just then the sound of voices was heard, and the girl leapt from her hiding-place with a look of terror, only to come into view of a stout matron and a young lady who were approaching the dividing hedge between their own and their neighbour's compound. "There's the little thief, I declare!" exclaimed the young lady, catching a glimpse of the red saree. "And see this gap in the hedge, she's no doubt made it flying from justice." "Well, it will serve our purpose, for I must go at once and tell Mrs. Rayner how disappointingly her _protégée_ has turned out," said Mrs. Harbottle, crossing the dividing line. "How could you expect anything else, mama? Mrs. Rayner has only been two months in the country," returned the young lady, with the scorn of new-comers bred of two cold weathers in India. "Look, the creature's going to slip through our fingers after all. She's making a dart through the hedge to the road"; and Miss Harbottle, hurrying forward, pounced upon the child, and seized the maimed hand still rolled in the saree, causing her to shriek with pain. "Be quiet, you wicked little thing! I believe you're hiding my ring there. Give it up this instant, or I shall tell Mrs. Rayner what a thief you've turned into. A nice whipping you'll get from her ayah, your old granny; and I hear you tried to bite my butler into the bargain!" "Ai, Missus, I not done nossin' bad. I not done steal ring! I not done bite butler, he only bleeding my fingers," the child wailed. Remembering the kind face which had looked pityingly upon her from the other side of the hedge, she sprang towards the gap, but the friendly figure had disappeared and Miss Harbottle's fingers were gripping her shoulder like a vice and dragging her along the compound.