"A shindy at home was it? Turned out of doors is it ye are? Sarves ye right, maybe. But it's a could sleepin' place, _al_ the same, and wan niver knows. The gates won't be opened these two hours, but ye can come in this way. Here's an empty luggige room, where yez cuddn't do no harm ef ye wanted." He ushered them in, closed the door behind them, and turned the key with a knowing wink. "Oi'm clair of yez now, me beauties. The pollisman can do as he thinks best when he comes on at sivin o'clock. Oi've catched them if they're wanted, an' that's as much as they kin expect from a night watchman." The police sergeant arrived at his appointed time. The squaws had accepted their confinement with a contented mind, and were asleep. Under the shelter of a roof and on a wooden floor, they could stretch themselves at length, which was grateful after the cramped position of the night. Their apathetic indifference convinced the man of authority that their tale was true; they had come on the pier while the gates were open the evening before, and fallen asleep. It was wrong, as he assured them, and he could take them up for it; but to what good end? he asked himself. He was a _virtuoso_ in malefactors, and did not care to encumber himself with a capture out of which so little credit with his superiors could be got, as three squawks sleeping on a pier. "Look out, now!" he said, shaking his finger at them. "I let you off this time, but if"--another shake of his finger--"but if ever--I--catch-you here again--you may look out for squalls." Thérèse had lifted her head in dull indifference; but at the sound of his voice her face changed. She looked at him. It was now long ago since she had heard that voice before--when she was quite a girl, the speaker quite a young man--but the occasion was a momentous one. It was when she had been arrested by mistake instead of Fidèle. If only it had been Fidèle indeed; and if Fidèle had been punished then as she deserved, she would not have come back again, like the hungry ghosts of the long forgotten dead, to push the living from their stools and bring them to ruin. There kindled a red coal down deep at the bottom of Thérèse's eyes and made them glow and burn, and the surging blood rose to her weather-beaten cheek and reddened it behind the scarce transparent; skin the lips parted, and the white teeth glistened, and for the moment Thérèse in her fury looked handsomer, if in an evil way, than she had ever done in her youth. It was no apathetic face now, carven in walnut wood, but rather the features of a snake-haired fury, as one may see them at times in the caverns of a red-coal fire. She laid her hand upon the sergeant as he was turning to go, after having discharged his prisoners. "I know you," she said, as he turned in surprise. "Remember me?" "You? Where have I seen you? When was it?" "Long ago--_enfante perdue_--Remember now?"