For the voice was none other than the voice of Alice herself! CHAPTER XLII. ALICE. 'Alice!' I cried. She rose from her knees and turned to meet me. Her face was pale; her eyes were heavy and they were full of tears. 'Alice!' 'I saw you when you came here, a week ago,' she said. 'Oh! Humphrey, I saw you, and I was ashamed to let you know that I was here.' 'Ashamed? My dear, ashamed? But how--why--what dost thou here?' 'How could I meet Robin's eyes after what I had done?' 'It was done for him, and for his mother, and for all of us. Poor child, there is no reason to be ashamed.' 'And now I meet him, and he is in a fever, and his mind wanders; he knows me not.' 'He is sorely stricken, Alice; I know not how the disease may end; mind and body are sick alike. For the mind I can do nothing; for the body I can do but little: yet with cleanliness and good food we may help him to mend. But tell me, Child, in the name of Heaven, how camest thou in this place?' But before anything she would attend to the sick man. And presently she brought half-a-dozen negresses, who cleaned and swept the place, and sheets were fetched and a linen shirt, in which we dressed our patient, with such other things as we could devise for his comfort. Then I bathed his head with cold water, continually changing his bandages so as to keep him cool; and I took some blood from him, but not much, because he was greatly reduced by bad food and hard work. When he was a little easier we talked. But, Heavens! to think of the villainy which had worked its will upon this poor child! As if it was not enough that she should be forced to fly from a man who had so strangely betrayed her, and as if it was not enough that she should be robbed of all her money--but she must also be put on board, falsely and treacherously, as one, like ourselves, sentenced to ten years' servitude on the Plantations! For, indeed, I knew and was quite certain that none of the Maids of Taunton were thus sent abroad. It was notorious, before we were sent away, that, with the exception of Susan Blake, who died of jail-fever at Dorchester, all the Maids were given to the Queen's ladies, and by them suffered to go free on the payment by their parents of thirty or forty pounds apiece. And as for Alice, she was a stranger in the place, and it was not known that she had joined that unfortunate procession. So that, if ever a man was kidnapper and villain, that man was George Penne.