I'll meet you at the prison door when you come out, if you please, an' I'll marry you straight away.' Those were my very words, Mr.Superintendent, an' I mean to keep to them.' Mrs.Haddon stood with flaming face and throbbing bosom, a tragedy queen in miniature, suffused with honest emotion.

Ephraim sat apparently absorbed in his left boot, thrusting his finger into the hole in the sole, as if probing a wound.
'You wouldn't think, ma'am,' he said presently with the air of a martyr, 'that I gave fourteen-and six for them pair o' boots not nine weeks since.' Mrs.Haddon turned away with an impatient gesture.
'If you've said all you have to say, you might let me get on with my work.' 'I think that's all, Mrs.Haddon.' The searcher arose, and stood for a moment turning up the toe of one boot and then the other; he seemed to be calculating his losses on the bargain.

'You hand over the boy Richard, I understand, ma'am ?' 'I'll do what is right, Mr.Shine.' 'The Committee said as much.

The Committee has great respect for you, Mrs.Haddon.' Ephraim lifted his feet with an effort, and carried them slowly from the house, carefully and quietly closing the kitchen door after him.

About half a minute later he opened the door again, just as carefully and as quietly, and said: 'Good night, ma'am, and God bless you.' Then he went away, his hands bunched behind him, walking like a man carrying a heavy burden.
CHAPTER IV DICK HADDON and Ted McKnight were still at large next morning, and nothing was heard of them till two o'clock in the afternoon, when Wilson's man, Jim Peetree, reported having discovered the boys swimming in the big quarry in the old Red Hand paddock.