d have liked to ask him, but I did not
choose to; for I guessed he would not have answered me. One was whether
he had traced the old Russian whose coming had been the beginning of all
the trouble, so far as I was concerned, anyway; and how he knew that a
woman--a red-haired woman as he had said--had been in Cassavetti's rooms
the night he was murdered.

If that woman were Anne--as in my heart I knew she must have been,
though I wouldn't allow myself to acknowledge it--he must have
discovered further evidence that cleared her, or he would certainly have
been prosecuting a search for her, instead of arresting me.

However, I hoped to get some light on the mystery either when my case
came before the magistrate, or between then and the trial, supposing I
was committed for trial.

It was when we were nearing Dover, about three o'clock on a heavenly
summer morning, that I began to understand my position. We were all on
deck,--I lying at full length on a bench, with plenty of cushions about
me, and a rug over me.

"Well, we're nearly in," Freeman remarked cheerfully. "Another five
minutes will do it. Feel pretty fit?"

"Splendid," I answered, swinging my feet off the bench, and sitting up.

"That's all right. Here, take Harris's arm--so. I sha'n't worry about
your left arm; this will do the trick."

"This" meant that a handcuff was snapped round my right wrist, and its
fellow, connected with it by a chain, round Harris's left.

I shivered involuntarily at the touch of the steel, at the sensation of
being a prisoner in reality,--fettered!

"I say, that isn't necessary," I remonstrated, rather unsteadily. "You
must know that I shall make no attempt to escape."

"Yes, I know that, but we must do things decently and in order," he
answered soothingly, as one would speak to a fractious child. "That's
quite comfortable, isn't it? You'd have had to lean on one of us anyhow,
being an invalid. There, the rug over your shoulder--so; not a soul will
notice it, and we'd go ashore last; we've a compartment reserved on the
train, of course."

I dare say he was right, and that none of the many passengers noticed
anything amiss; but I felt as if every one must be staring at me,--a
handcuffed felon. The "bracelet" didn't hurt me at all, like those that
had been forced on my swollen wrists in the Russian prison, and that had
added considerably to the tortures I endured; but somehow it seemed
morally harder to bear,--as a slight but