He drew a long breath, and looked again at the door with that hunted look his face had worn before. "I knew it; that proves it," he said. "I'm getting an old man, Charlie, and still my vengeance has brought me nothing but this: that I sit in this place, with no soul on God's earth to speak a good word for me, and with the knowledge that I may have wrecked the lives of two women. There's hell for me, Charlie, and that dead woman will fling me down to it!" It was in my mind then, in sheer pity for the hunted wretch, to tell him the truth. But I saw in a moment that if I did that he would understand that he had been robbed of his vengeance from the very start, and had brought himself to his present pass for nothing; for the woman he had pursued was living still. I understood that in that case I should make him a more bitter enemy to the mother and the girl than ever, out of sheer rage at having been duped so long. And in any case I had seen enough of him to know that I could not trust him. And out of his fright some good might come. That fright was indeed so great that when, a moment later, a hand was laid upon the door, and it opened cautiously, the man started up, with something very like a shriek. But it was nothing more than Moggs, untidy and slipshod as ever; she gave me a quick glance as she came in, and my heart gave a leap, for I seemed to read in it that she had succeeded. However, she merely muttered something about the fire, and went across the room to attend to it. Kneeling there, she began to croon to herself that strange weird song that had no tune nor time to it, and which I had heard her sing before. I was casting about in my mind for some means of speaking to her alone, without arousing Fanshawe's suspicions, or at least of getting rid of Fanshawe for a few moments, when the girl solved the difficulty for herself, and that too in the quaintest fashion. She suddenly looked up at me, with a queer smile on her face, and spoke. "You know about that there princess you was talkin' of, guv'nor, don't yer?" she asked; then, without waiting for a reply, went on demurely enough: "I dunno' but wot I 'aven't worked out that story in me own way, after all." "How's that, Moggs?" "Can't that girl cease her chatter, and go?" demanded Fanshawe angrily, as he cast himself down on his bed, and lay there with his hands clasped under his head. "'Alf a tick, guv'nor, 'alf a tick," remonstrated Moggs, turning to him; then she looked back at me. "Wot if you was to 'ear that the princess was fetched away by a ugly sort o' fairy--smuggled out, in a manner o' speakin'--an' brought to that ugly fairy's place," the thin cracked voice was growing excited--"an' 'id away by 'er--eh? Wot then? Serpose the princess crep' up the stairs without nobody seein' 'er----"