“I saw him go in about half after one. I saw a woman go in and out twice, too; but that was after three. The last time there was a girl with her, and they whispered, and while the woman was in a gentleman went in and come out again quick. Him that raised the fuss afterward. But my man he never come out till half-past four. I heard the clock, when it was dusklike. He never see me, and he walked quick. And he was crossing the street by my stand when he drops something out of his hand, quick, right in the middle of the road, in the traffic. So I jumped to get it before a bus went over it, and it was just a little blue glass bottle that smelled funny.” “What did you do with it?” She was exultant, treading on air, the rain falling unfelt on her thinly clad shoulders. And yet she dreaded that at a question the boy’s story would fall to the ground. “Put it in my box. It’s there now. You bet I didn’t tell Billy Cook anything about it to-day, when he was smelling round! I was sick when I went home, and I never thought of it till to-day, and the man wouldn’t let me speak.” “What did he look like, the man you saw come out of the house?” “He was big, and ugly, without no mustache. I’d know him if I see him. Say, do you suppose there was stuff in that bottle to kill a man?” “I don’t know. Let me see it.” The boy yawned; but he took it from his box as they walked. In the light of a street-lamp Ismay looked at it, shaking with excitement. An ordinary chemist’s bottle, of blue glass, without a label. She pulled out the cork, and a faint odor of bitter almonds met her nostrils. Prussic acid! And the bottle had held enough to kill ten men! In a wild fit of laughter that made the boy start, she shook from head to foot. “Can’t you remember anything else about him?” she gasped, at last. “Dirty cuffs,” said the boy doubtfully. “I saw ’em in the lights when he passed the shop at the corner. Oh! and blue things on them, on the one next me.” “Blue things! What like?” “Oh, I dunno! They were blue. Studs, I guess. He was awful ugly, and thin.” Ismay stopped short on the soaking pavement, and whistled to a belated hansom. “Come on; we’re going to get that money!” she said, and before the boy could object she had jerked him adroitly into the cab. But as she gave the driver an address that made him stare, her bold heart was quailing. In another hour she might have given her own mother over to be hanged! At best it would be touch and go. She caught the bootblack’s dirty hand and clung to it despairingly, as if to her only friend. Something not herself was driving her; something she must obey. She shook in her terror, sitting close to the dirty little boy. CHAPTER XXX. INTO THE LION’S MOUTH. In the sickness of her suspense Ismay turned to the bootblack. Her mouth was so stiff and dry that she questioned him chiefly to see if her tongue would obey her.