ng him off, Rogue Riderhood went to the lawyers and declared that
it was Hexam himself who had really killed the man whose body he had
found. Riderhood swore that Hexam had confessed the crime to him.

Wrayburn, knowing what a shock this charge against her father would be
for Lizzie, went with the officers sent to seize him. But they made no
arrest, for that night Hexam himself was drowned by accidentally falling
from his own boat.

But the false charge against him lay heavy on Lizzie's mind. She hated
the river and all that was connected with it, and soon found herself a
decent lodging in another part of London.

Here she lived with a weird little dwarf of a girl, so deformed that
she could scarcely walk at all.

"I can't get up," she used to say to strangers, "because my back's bad
and my legs are queer."

She had an odd face, with sharp gray eyes, and her wits were sharper
yet. She worked at the strangest trade in the world. She had visiting
cards on which was printed:

________________________________________
| |
| MISS JENNIE WREN |
| DOLLS' DRESSMAKER |
| |
| Dolls Attended at Their Own Residence |
|________________________________________|

She was really and truly a dolls' dressmaker and sat all day long making
tiny frocks out of silk and ribbon. Every evening she would hobble out
to the door of the theater or of a house where a ball was going on and
wait until a lady came out in a beautiful costume; then she would take
careful note of it and go home and dress a doll just like it. She even
made a minister doll, in clerical collar and surplice, and used to rent
him out for doll weddings.

But in spite of her trade she disliked children, because the rude ones
of the neighborhood called her names through her keyhole and mimicked
her bent back and crooked legs.

"Don't talk to _me_ of children," she often said; "_I_ know their tricks
and their manners!" and when she said this she would make a fierce
little jab in the air with her needle, as if she were putting out
somebody's eyes.

Jennie Wren had a miserable drunkard of a father, whom she called her
"troublesome child."

"He is enough to break his mother's heart," she would say when he
staggered in. "I wish I had never brought him up. Ugh! You muddling,
disgraceful, prodigal old son! I can't bear to