He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask questions about her past and present life, without expressing a degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to repress. "You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?" he said. "Yes, sir." "I was told that you were married to her son." "They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to have see'd him." "Is that true, Carry?" "It is true. It wasn't he at all." "Who was it, Carry?" "Not her son;--but what does it signify? He's gone away, and I shall see un no more. He wasn't no good, Mr. Fenwick, and if you please we won't talk about un." "He was not your husband?" "No, Mr. Fenwick; I never had a husband, nor never shall, I suppose. What man would take the likes of me? I have just got one thing to do, and that's all." "What thing is that, Carry?" "To die and have done with it," she said, bursting out into loud sobs. "What's the use o' living? Nobody 'll see me, or speak to me. Ain't I just so bad that they'd hang me if they knew how to catch me?" "What do you mean, girl?" said Fenwick, thinking for the moment that from her words she, too, might have had some part in the murder. "Ain't the police coming here after me a'most every day? And when they hauls about the place, and me too, what can I say to 'em? I have got that low that a'most everybody can say what they please to me. And where can I go out o' this? I don't want to be living here always with that old woman." "Who is the old woman, Carry?" "I suppose you knows, Mr. Fenwick?" "Mrs. Burrows, is it?" She nodded her head. "She is the mother of the man they call the Grinder?" Again she nodded her head. "It is he whom they accuse of the murder?" Yet again she nodded her head. "There was another man?" She nodded it again. "And they say that there was a third," he said,--"your brother Sam." "Then they lie," she shouted, jumping up from her seat. "They lie like devils. They are devils; and they'll go, oh, down into the fiery furnace for ever and ever." In spite of the tragedy of the moment, Mr. Fenwick could not help joining this terribly earnest threat and the Marquis of Trowbridge together in his imagination. "Sam hadn't no more to do with it than you had, Mr. Fenwick." "I don't believe he had," said Mr. Fenwick. "Yes; because you're good, and kind, and don't think ill of poor folk when they're a bit down. But as for them, they're devils." "I did not come here, however, to talk about the murder, Carry. If I thought you knew who did it, I shouldn't ask you. That is business for the police, not for me. I came here partly to look after Sam. He ought to be at home. Why has he left his home and his work while his name is thus in people's mouths?"