"You are right. If she has it on her, I will find it." And the woman went down on her knees and felt over Mattina, pulling her frock roughly about. In a moment she found the pins that closed the opening of the pocket, and dragged them out, thrusting her hand inside. "Here it is!" she screamed triumphantly. "See! I have it!" and she waved the folded note which she pulled out of the pocket. But as soon as she looked at it, her tone changed to one of bitter disappointment. "She has changed it, the shameless one, and this is all that remains!" Mattina tried to snatch it from her. "That is mine! That is mine! That is not yours! It is five drachmæ. Give it to me! It is mine I tell you." Her mistress laughed aloud. "She told Taki here that she had not a 'lepton' of her own." "That was before," cried Mattina, wildly, beginning to sob. "That was before I had this. This is mine! It is mine! On my father's soul, I tell you it is mine!" "If it be yours," asked one of the sisters, "where did you find it?" "She gave it to me." "She! What she?" "She, the Madmazella from the next house." "She tells lies!" broke in her mistress. "A governess, who works one day that she may eat the next! Has she money to give?" "When did she give it to you?" asked the master. "When she went away in the carriage to go to her country." Then they all laughed. "Ah, of course, you thought of someone who has gone away and whom we cannot ask! You are very clever, my girl, but your cleverness will not pass with us!" "Now, enough words," said her mistress. "I shall lock her up in her room and send for the police inspector. Perhaps in prison they may get the truth out of her." Mattina turned as pale as wax. She knew what prison was. Even in Poros she had seen men with their arms tied back with ropes, taken to Nauplia[24] to the big prison of the "Palamidi";[25] and she had heard tales of those who had returned from there! "To prison!" she gasped. "To prison! I?" "Of course," said her mistress, enjoying her terror. "Did you think that you could steal and then stay in honest houses? Now you will see what will happen to you, you little thief!" Mattina stumbled back against the wall. The sweat sprang out on her face, she kept wetting her lips, and her hands groped before her as though she were in the dark. Her mistress seized hold of her arm and pulled her towards the open door of the room. For the first moments she struggled wildly, and then feeling how useless it was, she let herself be dragged out of the door and up the few steps to her little dark room. Her mistress pushed open the door with her foot and thrust Mattina in so violently that she fell upon the mattress in the further corner. Then the key was pulled out of the keyhole, and the door locked and double-locked on the outside; then Mattina heard her mistress's heavy tread descending to the room below.