icult place to hide anything could not easily be found. Every
article of ours would be ransacked, I felt sure. Our handbags would be
searched; our clothes ditto. Where on earth could we put that purse?

I was sitting on the bed as I looked round the room. We would, of
course, be lying in the bed when they came to search the room, and even
our pillows would not be safe from their touch. Stay! What did the bed
clothes consist of? A hasty examination disclosed two blankets and a
sheet, and under those the mattress. That mattress gave me an idea. I
had found a hiding-place.

"Have you scissors and needle and cotton in your bag?" I whispered.

Mother nodded. "I think Norah put my sewing case in."

She opened it. Yes, everything was to hand.

With her help I turned the mattress right up, and made an incision in
the middle of the ticking.

"Give me the money," I said in a low voice.

She handed it silently. I slipped each coin carefully into the incision.

"We'll leave them the francs," mother whispered. "They might ... they
might ... wish to harm us if they found nothing."

I nodded. Then with the aid of the needle and cotton I stitched up the
opening I had made, and without more ado we took off our outer clothes,
our boots and stockings, and lay down in the bed.

But not to sleep! We neither of us closed an eyelid, so alert were we
for the expected footstep on the other side of the door.

They gave us a reasonable time to go to sleep. Our extinguished candle
told them we were in bed. Near about twelve o'clock our strained hearing
detected the sound of a slight fumbling at the door. It opened, and the
moonlight streaming in through the uncurtained windows showed us,
through our half-shut eyelids, the figures of our escort and the
hunchback. They moved like cats about the room. It struck me even then
that they were used to these midnight searches.

A thrill of fear went through me as the hunchback passed the bed, but a
dogged persistency was with me still that they should not have our
money. Our handbags were taken out of the room, doubtless to be examined
at leisure by the old woman, and mulct of anything valuable. We heard a
slight clink of money which meant the purse was emptied. Our clothes
were shaken and examined, even our boots were looked into.

Lastly they came to the bed. My eyes were glued then to my cheeks, and
mother's must have been so as well. I could not see what they did, but I
could feel them. T