she did not quite understand this and wondered what it
meant, and when she looked up at her stepfather, Dunn was certain there
was both distrust and suspicion in her manner.

"I suppose," she said then, "last night seemed to you a good
recommendation?" As she spoke she glanced at her wrists where the
bruises still showed, and Deede Dawson's smile broadened.

"One should always be ready to give another chance to a poor fellow
who's down," he said. "He may run straight now he's got an opportunity.
I told him he had better shave, but he seems to think a beard suits him
best. What do you say?"

"Breakfast's waiting," Ella answered, turning away without taking any
notice of the question.

"I'll go in then," said Deede Dawson. "You might show Dunn the way to
the kitchen--his name's Robert Dunn, by the way--and tell Mrs. Barker to
give him something to eat."

"I should think he could find his way there himself," Ella remarked.

But though she made this protest, she obeyed at once, for though she
used a considerable liberty of speech to her stepfather, it was none the
less evident that she was very much afraid of him and would not be very
likely to disobey him or oppose him directly.

"This way," she said to Dunn, and walked on along a path that led to the
hack of the house. Once she stopped and looked hack. She smiled slightly
and disdainfully as she did so, and Dunn saw that she was looking at a
clump of small bushes near where they had been standing.

He guessed at once that she believed Deede Dawson to be behind those
bushes watching them, and when she glanced at him he understood that she
wished him to know it also.

He said nothing, though a faint movement visible in the bushes convinced
him that her suspicions, if, indeed, she had them, were well-founded,
and they walked on in silence, Ella a little ahead, and Dunn a step or
two behind.

The garden was a large one, and had at one time been well cultivated,
but now it was neglected and overgrown. It struck Dunn that if he was to
be the gardener here he would certainly not find himself short of work,
and Ella, without looking round, said to him over her shoulder:

"Do you know anything about gardening?"

"A little, miss," he answered.

"You needn't call me 'miss,'" she observed. "When a man has tied a girl
to a chair I think he may regard himself as on terms of some familiarity
with her."

"What must I call you?" he asked, and his words bore to himself a d