brought before the magistrate to-morrow morning."

"The other prisoners!" gasped Marion, now turning as pale as her
mistress and Kate.

"Ah, the fine friends you were with last night. One or two of them are
well-known gaol birds, and the rest are not much better."

Marion looked at Kate and then at her mistress, as the policeman
proceeded to turn out her box.

But Kate had not spoken since she saw the watches taken out of her bag,
and sat staring in a sort of dazed stupor at what was going on.

"Kate, why don't you speak and tell them we were not with thieves?"
said Marion indignantly.

But Kate shook her head. "I don't know where they came from," she said.

"But you know William Minn is a very respectable young man," said
Marion, reproachfully.

But Kate did not seem to hear, and when the policeman told her to put
on her bonnet and shawl she did not attempt to move. But she let
Marion put them on for her, and then went downstairs with the rest, but
said not a word in explanation of how the watches came into her bag.

Marion was crying bitterly now, and vehemently declaring her own and
her cousin's innocence, but Kate did not cry or say a word, and the
policeman looked at her in some alarm as he went to the door to send a
colleague who was in waiting to fetch a cab to remove his prisoners.
Crying he was used to, but he did not understand this silence, and knew
not what to think of it.

He told Mrs. Maple while he was waiting for the cab where he was going
to take the girls, and that Marion's father would be permitted to see
them if he came to the prison in the course of the day. They would be
examined before the magistrate the next morning with the other
prisoners who had been taken at the theatre, and perhaps by that time
Kate would confess who had given her the watches. But, alas! before
the next morning Kate had to be removed to the prison infirmary, and
her mother was sent for by Marion's father, who was so overwhelmed with
trouble at what had befallen his daughter and niece that he hardly knew
what to do.

Kate was soon seriously ill, for the shock had brought on an attack of
brain fever, and during her wild ramblings and half incoherent talk her
nurses heard a good deal of how Mrs. Maple had been deceived and robbed
by her trusted shop-woman, but no word about the watches found in her
possession did Kate ever utter.

By the time Mrs. Haydon reached London the first examination of the
prisoners