she had no very solid ground for her visit.  She had brooded in her bedroom over Cutts, and had thought what a grand thing it would be to save him, but when she stepped inside Messrs. Mortimer’s door, and was face to face with a raised desk, protected by rails, behind which clerks were busy writing, or answering questions, her dreams disappeared; she saw what a fool she was, and she would have liked to retreat.  However, it was too late, for one of the gentlemen, behind the rails asked what she wanted.

“I’ve come about Mr. Cutts.”

“Oh yes; committed for arson at Cowfold.  Sit down in that room for a few minutes.  Mr. Mortimer will attend to you presently.”

Miriam was shown into a little box-like den, in which there was a round, leather-covered table, with a couple of chairs, but no books, and no newspaper.  She had to wait for twenty terrible minutes, in which her excitement increased to such a degree that once or twice she was on the point of rushing out past the clerks, and running back to Cowfold.  But she did not do it, and after a while Mr. Mortimer entered.

“Well, Miss Tacchi, what can I do for you?” He was gentle in his behaviour, and he soothed by his first words poor Miriam’s flutter.

“Oh, if you please, sir, Mr. Cutts is not guilty.”

“Why not?”

“It is a cruel thing that he should suffer.  He is as kind a creature as ever lived.  You don’t know how kind he has been to his old aunt.  He always sold honest things.  There are scores of people in Cowfold who deserve to be transported more than he.”

“That won’t help him much.  Good people are a queer set sometimes.  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.