“You wait till you hear all he’s done! I don’t mean taking my revolver from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I’d done with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he couldn’t trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that isn’t the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor people who may think me dead——” “Well?” There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with his great grief and grievance. “He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you don’t know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he’d never posted it at all!” Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth. “I’m a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked, and worked the poor word till it came distinctly. “It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so, at any rate; it does to me; but then I understand so little. I can’t think why he’s hiding you, or why you let yourself be hidden.” “But you must know what I’ve done; you must guess?” The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she looked from it to him without recoiling. “Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn’t believe it, unless it was an accident. And if it was an accident——” “It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was frightfully good to me, I’m grateful enough for all that. But he should have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I came to my senses he wouldn’t let me go. I needn’t remind you of that morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I’d have kept all my promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!” He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them know he was alive, and that with the doctor’s expressed approval. But now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow’s papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner’s name. “Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your account, if not on his!”