cry, but all at once, with a
sudden thought, she flew to the basket. But it was not there.

They searched and searched.

Of course it must be at the corner by the rubbish-heap, for she had
stood there and waved her basket. It would be lying among the broken
bottles.

The pale, thin rim of the autumn moon had risen over the yards while
they were searching there step by step, Silla every now and then
uttering a despondent, monotonous "Suppose I don't find it!" and Nikolai
plunging his arm up to the elbow into puddles in which the roll of money
might have fallen.

They had been by the bridge, they had searched the rubbish-heap, they
had looked up and down and everywhere; it was not to be found.

It was beginning to be late, and Mrs. Holman was waiting at home. She
would be really waiting now.

Silla began to cry.

Nikolai had only asked her once or twice to be quiet, and he would find
the money. Now he suddenly said:

"I should like to give you another good feed of cakes to-day, and then
throw myself into the sea with you, Silla. It would be no lie that we
lay there."

Whether his proposition was meant seriously or not, it did not gain a
hearing with her. She sat hopeless and despairing on a log while the big
tears ran down her cheeks.

The seventeen-year-old workshop apprentice stood thoughtfully, with his
flat cap pushed back over his rough hair, blackened by the week's work.
He was gazing intently into an old rotten hole in the log. The hole
became more and more rotten, more and more hollow, more and more empty
while his busy thoughts were trying to find an expedient. But none came.

Fully aware of her fate, Silla rose, took her basket, and started
homewards with her eyes fixed on the ground. She was going to the
scaffold. Nikolai accompanied her as far as he dared, reiterating in
different ways: "Don't be afraid, Silla, they can't kill you!"

Something like a low wail said that she heard him.

When she disappeared round the corner, he made a short cut which only he
and one or two old yard cats knew of; and from the hoarding at the
bottom of the square he saw her go, with bent head and the same quiet
step, without stopping, down the cellar stairs.

When it was dark, he stood outside the window and listened. He heard her
still sobbing quietly, after the storm that had passed over her.

Mrs. Holman had examined and cross-examined, and at last extracted from
Silla the confession that she had been with N