s to
arrest Mrs Ragg on the charge of murder. The alternative course he
proposed appeared to us weakly inadequate. However, he being a man and
we being women, he had his way. We returned with him at once to
Sea-Strand Cottage, the only concession he made to our fears being to
take a policeman with him, to wait outside the house in case he should
be wanted.

"The lonely situation has worked upon your nerves. You have dreamt a
little and imagined the rest," he said, by way of overcoming our
natural repugnance to return.

Julia gave him a scathing glance. "You will see," she said. She
vouchsafed no further word to him, but with an indignant head held
high, walked ahead of him and me as, side by side, we toiled over the
uneven road, the policeman bringing up the rear.

The caretaker, characteristically oblivious of the fact that her
lodgers, who, she had every reason to believe, were still in their
bedrooms, would presently call for their breakfast, was leisurely
eating her own over the newly-lit kitchen fire.

At sight of us, unexpectedly appearing before her, of our protector
with his air of authority, of the policeman, who, contrary to
instructions, introduced himself at the open door, Mrs Ragg rose with a
wavering cry that was like a whine, from her seat. She sucked in her
cheeks till they met, and with her claw-like hands grabbed her shabby
frock where it loosely covered her bosom.

"You are not Mrs Ragg," our companion said.

She grabbed more convulsively at her dress, and made no reply.

"Where is Mrs Ragg?"

"She is dead, sir. Dead," the woman said, and sat down and began to
cry. "She died the very afternoon the ladies came. I had the doctor to
her. You can ask the doctor if you don't believe me. I'd have kept her
alive if I could. She was my dear sister. I had only what she gave
me----"

"And you undertook to impersonate her?"

The poor creature gazed at us with imploring eyes. "'Twas my sister
that ordered it," she said, gasping with terror. "'Twas a pity the
fifteen shillings a week the ladies were to pay should be lost to the
family, my sister said. She put it in my head--she laid her orders on
me before she died; she----"

"And she was laid forth in the bedroom next to mine?" Julia said; "and
moved from there next morning to the shed in the garden."

"And from the shed taken at night to our brother's house, where she is
waiting burial," the woman, now anxious to unburden herself, explained.

B