"I only mean that just a few people went to him, and my father had gone. Oh, I believe he went often, and he used to tell us things that vexed Hermie so." "What things?" "Oh, about knocks and tables moving. And then dear father began to receive knocks and messages from our mother. That made Hermie almost frantic. She remembered mother well, and was offended. She called it 'profanity.' But I am sure my father did not know how it vexed her; he was always so considerate." "The boy came from Beardsley?" "Oh, yes. We knew, and know, nothing about the boy. He asked for my father, and was told to wait in the kitchen. I saw him there, and so did the maids. But only Hermie knew about the note--he gave it to her. She took it upstairs. I saw that she looked very white and angry. She told me that it was a message from that 'shameful impostor.' Then Hermie asked me to gather fruit in the garden, and she sent out the maids up the street. Then, some time after that, she--ah, you know it all!--gave the alarm. She called in people, and they went and rang for the police. She was very calm. Everyone knows the whole story after that." "Yes; but tell me what you did." "She never allowed me to go into that room where---- She told me my father was too much disfigured for me to recognize him. Oh, I thought of nothing but the loss of my father all that day. I went into his dressing-room and cried there. I took out his dear clothes and laid my head on them. Hermie sat with me part of the day. The police were in charge of the house; but no one had thought then of accusing her. "When it was dark night Hermie came to me and said that there was something we could do for father's sake, and I must help her. She told me the boy was in the house and he was innocent, but that if he was found he might be arrested unjustly. She told me that some great disgrace might fall on father's name if we did not get him safely away. Oh, I did not at all understand at the time that she meant that if he were charged she must confess and be convicted. She chose some clothes of father's, and then I found that the boy was locked in a very narrow press in that very room. He put on the clothes, and he and Hermie knotted some dark thing together and we let him down from the window in the dark to the garden. He got in the neighbor's garden. She told him how to get from garden to garden. The police were about, but he got away. Her mind seemed quite clear. She said that because the boy was innocent it was our duty to tell nothing that could lead to his capture. She never told Mr. Alden that she knew who the boy was or who sent him, that he had brought a letter, or how he escaped." "But how was she so certain that he was innocent?" "Ah, that is what I have asked myself night and day for years. What could make her certain but one thing? She _knew_, and if she knew that anyone else had committed the deed, why not tell and exonerate the boy?"