shook her head.

"I can't do that," she whispered. Then, after a shuddering pause, she
came a step nearer and said, in a lower whisper than ever: "He didn't
die--of his own accord. He was murdered."

Max grew hot, and cold. He heartily wished he had never come.

"All the more reason," he went on in a blustering voice, "why you should
inform the police. You had better lose no time about it."

"I can't do that," said the girl, "because he--the man who did it--was
kind to us--kind to Granny and me. If I tell the police, they will go
after him, and perhaps find him, and--and hang him. Oh, no," and she
shook her head again with decision, "I could not do that."

Max was silent for a few moments, looking at her for the first few
seconds with pity and then with suspicion.

"Why do you tell all this to me, then--a stranger--if you're so afraid
of the police finding out anything about it?"

The girl did not answer for a moment. She seemed puzzled to answer the
question. At last she said:

"I didn't mean to. When I saw you first, at the wharf, at the back
there, I just looked at you and hid myself again. And then I thought to
myself that as you were a gentleman perhaps I might dare to ask you what
I did."

Max, not unnaturally, grew more doubtful still. This apparently deserted
building, which he was asked to enter by the back way, might be a
thievish den of the worst possible character, and this girl, innocent as
she certainly looked, might be a thieves' decoy. Something in his face
or in his manner must have betrayed his thoughts to the shrewd Londoner;
for she suddenly drew back, uttering a little cry of horror. Without
another word she turned and slunk back along the passage and into the
street.

Now, if Max had been a little older, or a little more prudent, if he had
indeed been anything but a reckless young rascal with a taste for
exciting adventure, he would have taken this opportunity of getting away
from such a very questionable neighborhood. But, in the first place, he
was struck by the girl's story, which seemed to fit in only too well
with what he knew; and in the second place, he was interested in the
girl herself, the refinement of whose face and manner, in these dubious
surroundings, had impressed him as much as the expression of horror on
her face and the agony of cold which had caused her teeth to chatter and
her limbs to tremble.

Surely, he thought, the suspicions he had for a moment entertained abo