"So he ought. You are quite right there, Bessie. But didn't your mother...." "Mother is afraid of her life of the man. She daren't say anything." "Was there any other house he might have thought you would go to--any neighbour's, any relation's?" "I have no relations, Sir." "Ah! .... Then he deliberately shut you out of his house in the middle of the night, knowing you had nowhere else to go to?" "Yes!" "The damned scoundrel!" Bessie, who had been crying again, was looking up at him with wet but shining eyes. "Well, what are you going to do now? Do you know anybody in town who can take you in for to-night?" "No." "Then I must knock up one of the Inns for you. Here's the old Plough--what do you say to the Plough?" "Dan Baldromma goes there--Mrs. Beatty would get into trouble." "The Saddle then?" "I go there myself, every market-day, with butter and eggs--people would be talking." There was only the Mitre Hotel left, and Stowell himself shrank from that. To go to the Mitre with a girl at this time of night would be like shouting into the mouth of a megaphone. Within twenty-four hours the whole town would hear the story, with every explanation except the right one. "But, good heavens, girl, I can't go home and go to bed and leave you to walk about in the streets." "I'll do whatever you think best, Sir," said Bessie, crying again and stammering. They were at the corner of Old Post Office Place by this time, and, after a moment's hesitation, he took the girl's hand and drew it through his arm and then turned quickly in the opposite direction, saying: "Come, then, let us think." It was still raining but Stowell was scarcely aware of that. With the girl walking close by his side he was only conscious of a return of the faint dizziness he had felt in the garden at Douglas. To conquer this and to keep up his indignation about Dan Baldromma, while they walked round the square of streets, he asked what the man had said when he finally shut down the window. "He said I was to find my bed where I had found my company," said Bessie, stammering again and with her head down. "Meaning that you had been in bad company?" "Yes." "The foul-minded ruffian!" His nerves were quivering, and he knew that the hot tide of his indignation was ebbing rapidly. Suddenly an idea came to him and he felt an immense relief--Mrs. Quayle! She was a good, religious woman, who had seen sorrow herself, and that was the best kind to go to in a time of trouble. She would take Bessie in for to-night, and to-morrow they would all three go back together to Baldromma, and then--then he would tell that old blackguard what he thought of him. "That's it, Bessie! I wonder why in the world I didn't think of it before?" Bessie was answering "Yes" and "Yes," but her beaming eyes were looking sideways up at him, and the blood was pounding through his body with a rush. They had got back to the corner of Old Post Office Place when Stowell stopped and said: