metimes. But
why should _you_ interfere?"

"I cannot tell," replied Miriam, her voice beginning to shake; "but I
thought and I thought over it, and it is so wrong, so unfair, so
wicked, and I know the poor man so well. Why should they do anything
to him?" She would have proceeded in the same strain, and would have
compared the iniquity of arson with that of fraudulent contractors and
the brutal Scrutton, but she checked herself. "He is not guilty," she
added.

Mr. Mortimer was perplexed. He was accustomed in his profession to all
kinds of concealment of motives, and he conjectured that there must be
some secret of which he was unaware.

"Are you any relation?"

"No."

"Have you ever visited at his house, or has he been in the habit of
calling at yours?"

"No."

He was still more perplexed. He could not comprehend, and might very
well be excused for not comprehending, why the daughter of a
respectable tradesman in Cowfold should walk six miles on behalf of a
stranger, and be so anxious about him.

"One more question. You have had nothing whatever to do with Mr.
Cutts, except by going to his shop, and by talking to him now and then
as a neighbour?"

"Nothing;" and Miriam said it in such a manner, that the most hardened
sceptic must have believed her.

"The fire broke out at a quarter to eight. Had you seen Cutts about
that time?"

"I had met him in the street that evening as I came home."

"Where had you been?"

"Practising in the church."

"What time was it when you met him? Be careful."

Miriam now realised the importance of her answer.

The exact truth was that she had reached home at half-past seven, and
had seen Cutts going into his house then. It must be remembered that
although, as before observed, she was naturally truthful, she was so
because she was fearless, and had the instinctive tendency to
directness possessed by all forceful characters. Her veracity rested
on no principle. She was not like Jeanie Deans, that triumph of
culture, in whom a generalisation had so far prevailed that it was able
to overcome the strongest of passions and prevent a lie even to save a
sister's life. Miriam had been brought up in no such divine school.
She had heard that lying was wrong, but she had no religion, although
she listened to a sermon once every Sunday, and consequently the
relation in which the several duties and impulses stood to one another
was totally different from that which was