oor and hungry, there is a troop of devils who always follow such,
whispering all sorts of things to them. They are all, or nearly all,
known to me: take care you do not make their acquaintance.

"Yours most affectionately,

"CHARLES BIDDULPH."

What a strange letter, she thought. He must be mad. Yet there was
method in his madness, too. Devils such as he spoke of had leant over
her chair and whispered to her before now, plain to be heard. But that
was in the old times, when she sat brooding alone over the fire at
night. She was no longer alone now, and they had fled--fled, scared at
the face of a baby.

She went home and spoke to the landlady. But little was owing, and that
she had money enough to pay without the five pounds that the kind
gambler had given her. However, when she asked the landlady whether she
could stay there a week or two longer, the woman prayed her with tears
to begone; that she and her husband had brought trouble enough on them
already.

But there was still a week left of their old tenancy, so she held
possession in spite of the landlady; and from the police-officers, who
were still about the place, she heard that the two prisoners had been
committed for trial, and that that trial would take place early in the
week at the Old Bailey.

Three days before the trial she had to leave the lodgings, with but
little more than two pounds in the world. For those three days she got
lodging as she could in coffee-houses and such places, always meeting,
however, with that sort of kindness and sympathy from the women
belonging to them which could not be bought for money. She was in such
a dull state of despair, that she was happily insensible to all smaller
discomforts, and on the day of the trial she endeavoured to push into
the court with her child in her arms.

The crowd was too dense, and the heat was too great for her, so she
came outside and sat on some steps on one side of a passage. Once she
had to move as a great personage came up, and then one of the officers
said,--

"Come, my good woman, you mustn't sit there, you know. That's the
judge's private door."

"I beg pardon," she said, "and I will move, if you wish me. But they
are trying my husband for coining, and the court is too hot for the
child. If you will let me sit there, I will be sure to get out of the
way when my lord comes past."

The man looked at her as if it was a case somewhat out of his
experience, and went away. Soon, howev