Beecot, amazed. "You must be mistaken."

"No, I ain't, sir. That thing guv my lily-queen the 'orrors. Jes you
'ear, Mr. Beecot, and creeps will go up your back. Lor' 'ave mercy on us
as don't know the wickedness of the world."

"I think we have learned something of it lately, Mrs. Tawsey," was
Paul's grim reply. "But tell me--"

"Wot my pore angel sunbeam said? I will, and if it gives you nightmares
don't blame me," and Mrs. Tawsey, in her own vigorous, ungrammatical
way, related what she had heard from Sylvia. Paul was struck with horror
and wanted to see Sylvia. But this Deborah would not allow. "She's
sleepin' like a pretty daisy," said Mrs. Tawsey, "so don't you go
a-disturbin' of her nohow, though acrost my corp you may make a try, say
what you like."

But Paul thought better of it, thinking Sylvia had best be left in the
rough, kindly hands of her old nurse. He went off to find Hurd, and
related all that had taken place. The detective was equally horrified
along with Beecot when he heard of Sylvia's danger, and set to work to
prove the truth of what Maud had told the girl. He succeeded so well
that within a comparatively short space of time, the whole matter was
made clear. Mrs. Jessop, _alias_ Mrs. Krill, was examined, Tray was
found and questioned, Matilda was made to speak out, and both Jessop and
Hokar had to make clean breasts of it. The evidence thus procured proved
the truth of the terrible confession made by Maud Jessop to the girl she
thought to strangle. Hurd was amazed at the revelation.

"Never call me a detective again," he said to Paul. "For I am an ass. I
thought Jessop might be guilty, or that Hokar might have done it. I
could have taken my Bible oath that Mrs. Krill strangled the man; but I
never for one moment suspected that smiling young woman."

"Oh," Paul shrugged his shoulders, "she was mad."

"She must have been," ruminated the detective, "else she wouldn't have
given herself away so completely. Whatever made her tell Miss Norman
what she had done?"

"Because she never thought that Sylvia would live to tell anyone else.
That was why she spoke, and thought to torture Sylvia--as she did--in
the same way as she tortured that wretched man Lemuel. If I hadn't come
earlier to Rose Cottage than usual, and if Deborah had not met me
unexpectedly at the station, Sylvia would certainly have been killed.
And then Maud might have escaped. She laid her plans well. It was she
who induced Matilda t