“You shall be told as soon as ever your aunt arrives.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tilda feebly.  For the moment all the fight had gone out of her.

He stood eyeing her, pulling at his bony finger-joints, and seemed on the point of putting some further question, but turned abruptly and left the room.

As the door closed—­thank Heaven, at least, he did not bolt this one also!—­a dry sob escaped the child.  Why had she told that string of falsehoods?  She was trapped now—­imprisoned in this horrible house, not to be released until this fictitious aunt arrived, which, of course, would be never.  The book on her lap lay open at a coloured lithograph of Mazeppa bound upon his steed and in full flight across the Tartar steppes.  She knew the story—­was it not Mr. Maggs’s most thrilling “equestrian finale,” and first favourite with the public?  At another time she would have examined the picture eagerly.  But now it swam before her, unmeaning.  She closed the book, threw a glance around the four corners of the room, another at the stuffed kestrel—­whose pitiless small eye strangely resembled Doctor Glasson’s—­and dragged herself to the window.

The lower panes of the window were filled with coloured transparencies representing in series the history of the Prodigal Son.  They excluded a great deal of daylight and the whole of the view.  Even by standing on tip-toe she could not look over them, and she dared not try to raise the sash.

By-and-by a thought struck her.  She went back to her chair, lifted it, carried it to the window and climbed upon it; and this was no small feat or succession of feats, for as yet her thigh pained her, and fear held her half-paralysed.

What she looked upon was an oblong space enclosed by brick walls ten or twelve feet high, and divided by a lower wall—­also of brick—­into two parallelograms of unequal width.  Of these the wider was a gravelled yard, absolutely bare, in extent perhaps an acre; and here, in various knots and groups, were gathered some two dozen children.  Alongside of the yard and upon its left—­that is to say, as Tilda guessed, between it and the canal—­ran a narrower strip of kitchen garden, planted with leeks, cabbages, potatoes, and ending in a kind of shed—­part glass-house, part out-house—­built in lean-to fashion against the terminal wall, which overtopped it by several feet.  The children in the yard could not look into this garden, for the dividing wall reached far above their heads.

Tilda, too, had no eyes for the garden, after a first glance had assured her it was empty.  The children engaged all her attention.  She had never seen anything like them; and yet they were obviously boys and girls, and in numbers pretty equally divided, What beat her was that they neither ran about nor played at any game, but walked to and fro—­to and fro—­as though pacing through some form of drill; and yet again they could not be drilling,