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.

I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often
wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a
friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I
remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked
to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further
attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been
an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed
it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that
particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my
friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under
that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed
passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend
whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.

A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.

"You have not forgotten me, I hope," I said gently. It may be weak, but
I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever
the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.

She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.

I had never seen her before.

I could only stare helplessly at her.

"But you are not the woman who escaped last October?" I stammered at
last.

"Yes," she said pathetically, "I am. Who else should I be? What do you
want with me?"

But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inexplicable. I have
often thought since how much stranger fact is than fiction. The more
interested one is in life and in one's fellow-creatures the more
surprises there are in store for one. With every year I live my sense of
wonder increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. As I
stared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. She looked at me
almost with eagerness.

"You didn't take me for 'er, did you?" she said hurriedly. "'Er as
'elped me. Did you know 'er? She ain't copped, is she? Don't tell me as
she's copped too."

"I thought you _were_ her," I said. "I don't know what I thought. I
don't understand it."

"She found me on a dirty night," she said, "in a tumbledown cottage. I'd
never se