I pushed back my work, drew my hand over my eyes, (I did not need to make it tremble) and glanced up.  “No,” said I with a shake of my head, “but it is not always so bad.  I beg your pardon, miss, if it disturbs you.”

She threw back the shawl which she had held drawn tightly over her head, and advanced with an easy gliding step close to my side.  “You do not disturb me, but my father is—­is, well a trifle cross sometimes, and if he should speak up a little harsh now and then, you must not mind.  I am sorry you are so ill.”

What is there in some women’s look, some women’s touch that more than all beauty goes to the heart and subdues it.  As she stood there before me in her dark worsted dress and coarse shawl, with her locks simply braided and her whole person undignified by art and ungraced by ornament, she seemed just by the power of her expression and the witchery of her manner, the loveliest woman I had ever beheld.

“You are veree kind, veree good,” I murmured, half ashamed of my disguise, though it was assumed for the purpose of rescuing her.  “Your sympathy goes to my heart.”  Then as a deep growl of impatience rose from the room at my side, I motioned her to go and not irritate the man who seemed to have such control over her.

“In a minute,” answered she, “first tell me what you are making.”

So I told her and in the course of telling, let drop such other facts about my fancied life as I wished to have known to her and through her to her father.  She looked sweetly interested and more than once turned upon me that dark eye, of which I had heard so much, full of tears that were as much for me, scamp that I was, as for her own secret trouble.  But the growls becoming more and more impatient she speedily turned to go, repeating, however, as she did so,

“Now remember what I say, you are not to be troubled if they do speak cross to you.  They make noise enough themselves sometimes, as you will doubtless be assured of to-night.”

And the lips which seemed to have grown stiff and cold with her misery, actually softened into something like a smile.

The nod which I gave her in return had the solemnity of a vow in it.

My mind thus assured as to the correctness of my suspicions, and the way thus paved to the carrying out of my plans, I allowed some few days to elapse without further action on my part.  My motive was to acquaint myself as fully as possible with the habits and ways of these two desperate men, before making the attempt to capture them upon which so many interests hung.  For while I felt it would be highly creditable to my sagacity, as well as valuable to my reputation as a detective, to restore these escaped convicts in any way possible into the hands of justice, my chief ambition after all was to so manage the affair as to save the wife of Mr. Blake, not only from the consequences of their despair, but from the publicity and scandal attendant upon the open arrest of two heavily armed men.  Strategy, therefore, rather than force was to be employed, and strategy to be successful must be founded upon the most thorough knowledge of the matter with which one has to deal.  Three days, then, did I give to the acquiring of that knowledge, the result of which was the possession of the following facts.