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“Remember,” I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it, “if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me.”

I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she had lived beyond the pale too long.

“You have indeed been a friend to me,” she said. “God bless you, you good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank you, and good-bye. If you’ll give me the stable key, I’ll let myself in. It’s a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I’ll leave the stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the door. Good-bye again.”

* * * * *

I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.

I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.

“Have you heard about the escaped convict?” he said. “She has been taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this morning at Framlingham.”

He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.

“Poor soul!” he said. “I could almost wish she had made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her–some one very poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday, and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in my wood-yard, here in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work. And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of fortune could she have hidden her clothes here ?”

“She must have wandered here in the dark,” I suggested.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, turning in at his own gate. “But anyhow, the poor thing has been caught.”

* * * * *

My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject, it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a close.