They did not ask where she was going, and thought no more of the matter at that time, and a fortnight passed without anything occurring out of the usual way. Mrs. Chaplin got more sack-making, and Brown came occasionally to listen to Winny reading. For although his foot was better, he was not able to go to work, and the neighbours knew that Annie had been compelled to carry a good many things to the pawnshop to get bread, and that the rent had not been paid, for they heard Rutter's agent threaten at last to turn them out, if the rent was not taken to him in the course of the evening. Brown told Annie of this when she came home from work, suggesting that they had better look out for another place at once. "What! When we are so comfortable here, and you can go and hear Winny read! No, I'll go and tell Rutter that you'll be at work again next week, and if he'll wait for the rent, we'll pay him all up in a month." She swallowed her tea as fast as she could, and as they could not afford to burn a lamp now, she told her father to go and see the Chaplins if it got dark before she came back. "For I may have to wait for him, you know, but I will see him this time." She had found out where the Rutters had gone to live, and was not long walking the two miles that lay between, so that she got to her destination early in the evening, and was shown into the little back parlour where Rutter sat smoking. "What do you want?" he said taking the pipe from his mouth as Annie went in. He did not recognize her, and thought she might have come about a house of his that was empty. "I've come about the rent, Mr. Rutter," said Annie speaking very mildly. "If you will wait—" "Wait!" roared Rutter. "Who told you to come to me and ask such a thing as that? What do you suppose I can do? If you can't pay, you must go." "But we can pay, and we will pay," said Annie, not the least daunted by his loud talking. "I've only come to ask you to give us a little time. Father has hurt his foot, and I can't earn—" "That's none of my business what you can earn or what you can't. Pay your rent and pay it at once, or out you go to-morrow morning." Most girls in Annie's place would have burst into tears and again pleaded with the hard landlord for longer time, but something in Rutter's manner roused the girl's anger to such a pitch, that taking up the glass of beer that stood close by she dashed it in his face and then threw the glass at the chimney ornaments, sweeping them from the mantel-piece with a crash, and bringing Mrs. Rutter into the room to see what had happened. By that time, her husband had seized Annie, and as his wife came in, he ordered her to go and fetch a policeman at once. This roused the girl to greater fury, and she screamed and fought to escape from his detaining hold. But she was in the grasp of a man not likely to release her, and in a few minutes, she was handed over to a policeman, charged with committing an unprovoked assault upon Rutter.