last pheasant, she had had others.

Mrs Crewe wanted, too, the money she would get from me for the room, and
said so. She would take no money that she had not earned. She was that
kind. She worked pretty hard too--sold the vegetables out of her bit of
garden, did charing work whenever she could get it, and made a little
out of her fowls. She said, too, that Elsie had not been so well, and
had asked for me.

"Very well, Mrs Crewe," I said. "But there is one thing I have to tell
you. I have been in prison, as you know, and something is going to
happen which will put me back there again, and this time I shall not
come out alive."

She said that she knew what I meant. Bates had not done the fair
thing--that was acknowledged in the village. Still, I could do no good
by getting violent again, and it was just as well that I should stop
with her and let her talk me into a better frame of mind. I laughed. She
was a good woman, but no amount of talk would have stopped me. And then
I said I would sleep that night at her cottage.

I did, and nearly all night I heard that kid crying.

"What is the matter with Elsie?" I said.

Mrs Crewe told me. Lizzie had got permission to have Elsie up to London
in the following week to see the King go past. Now the doctor had
forbidden it. He was right too. She seemed to me to be pretty bad, and
in the evening she was light-headed. I asked Mrs Crewe what she had
done.

"Told her that as she can't go to London to see the King, I have written
to Buckingham Palace to ask the King to come and see her. Anything to
keep her quiet. Funny the way her mind is set on seeing the King."

"And why don't you write?" I asked. "If he knew, and if he could come, I
believe he would."

"Aye," she said, "and so do I. But he might never see the letter, and
kings have a deal to do, they tell me."

That day I tramped into Helmston to buy something that I wanted for Mr
Bates, and as I walked into Helmston I could not get the thoughts of
that kid out of my mind. Then a funny sort of idea struck me. I had been
an actor, as I have already said, and I am pretty good at make-up. I
bought a few other things in Helmston besides the revolver.

When I got back I told Mrs Crewe my idea, and at first she was opposed
to it. She said that Elsie would be certain to recognise my face and
voice, in spite of my disguise, and that if she found out she had been
deceived, she would never forgive her.

"No," I said, "she will