“If I maun gae, I will gae; but I willna hae your filthy hand on me, ye beastly de’il!” she added, as she reached the cab.  She paused an instant, with her foot upon the step, and looked up and down the street, as if she contemplated for a moment a flight for liberty and life; but probably she did not like the prospect of the hue and cry, the pursuit and recapture sure to ensue, for the next instant she stepped into the cab.

That night Rose Cameron passed in the Police Station-House of the Westminster precinct.  She had slept in much less comfortable, if more respectable quarters, when she lived in the Highland hut at the foot of Ben Lone.

The officers who had her in charge overlooked all her viciousness in consideration of her youth and beauty, and afforded her every indulgence which their own duty and her safe-keeping permitted.  They gave her a cell and a clean cot to herself; and one of them, to whom she gave a sovereign, went out at her orders and bought for her a luxurious and abundant supper.

And Rose—­a perfect animal, as I beg leave to remind you—­ate heartily and slept soundly, notwithstanding her perils and terrors.

The next morning Rose Cameron was taken before the sitting magistrate of the Police Court at Vincent Square.

The two witnesses from Lone, McNeil, the saddler, who had seen her lurking under the window of the castle at midnight on the night of the murder; and Ferguson, the railway clerk, who had sold her the ticket for the twelve-fifteen express to London, had been summoned by telegraph on the day before, had come up by the night train, and were now in court ready to identify the prisoner.  Sir Lemuel Levison’s house-steward, also summoned by telegraph, was there to identify the stolen jewels which were produced in court.  The examination was brief and conclusive.  McNeil and Ferguson swore to the woman as being Rose Cameron, and also as being the very woman they had each seen on the night of the murder, under the suspicious circumstances already mentioned.

And McRath swore to the watch and chain, the jewelled snuff-box, and the solitaire diamond ring as the property of his deceased master, worn upon his person on the same night of the murder.

The three policemen swore to finding the stolen property in the possession of the prisoner.

Rose Cameron was incapable of inventing a plausible defence.

When asked how this property came into her possession, she said she had picked up the watch and chain found upon her person, on the sidewalk, on Westminster Road, where she supposed the owner must have dropped it, and as she did not know who the owner might be, she had kept it, to her sorrow.  But as for the gold snuff-box and the solitaire diamond ring, she did not know anything about them; she had never seen them in her life, until they were drawn out of the hollow cornice by Inspector Pryor, and where they must have been hidden by somebody else.