some part in the murder.

"Ain't the police coming here after me a'most every day? And when
they hauls about the place, and me too, what can I say to 'em? I have
got that low that a'most everybody can say what they please to me.
And where can I go out o' this? I don't want to be living here always
with that old woman."

"Who is the old woman, Carry?"

"I suppose you knows, Mr. Fenwick?"

"Mrs. Burrows, is it?" She nodded her head. "She is the mother of the
man they call the Grinder?" Again she nodded her head. "It is he whom
they accuse of the murder?" Yet again she nodded her head. "There was
another man?" She nodded it again. "And they say that there was a
third," he said,--"your brother Sam."

"Then they lie," she shouted, jumping up from her seat. "They lie
like devils. They are devils; and they'll go, oh, down into the fiery
furnace for ever and ever." In spite of the tragedy of the moment,
Mr. Fenwick could not help joining this terribly earnest threat and
the Marquis of Trowbridge together in his imagination. "Sam hadn't no
more to do with it than you had, Mr. Fenwick."

"I don't believe he had," said Mr. Fenwick.

"Yes; because you're good, and kind, and don't think ill of poor folk
when they're a bit down. But as for them, they're devils."

"I did not come here, however, to talk about the murder, Carry. If I
thought you knew who did it, I shouldn't ask you. That is business
for the police, not for me. I came here partly to look after Sam. He
ought to be at home. Why has he left his home and his work while his
name is thus in people's mouths?"

"It ain't for me to answer for him, Mr. Fenwick. Let 'em say what
they will, they can't make the white of his eye black. But as for
me, I ain't no business to speak of nobody. How should I know why he
comes and why he goes? If I said as how he'd come to see his sister,
it wouldn't sound true, would it, sir, she being what she is?"

He got up and went to the front door, and opened it, and looked about
him. But he was looking for nothing. His eyes were full of tears, and
he didn't care to wipe the drops away in her presence.

"Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I
came."

[Illustration: "Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it
wasn't all for him that I came."]

"For who else, then?"

"Do you remember how we loved you when you were young, Carry? Do you
remember my wife, and how you used to come and play with the children