slums, had not the least idea of combatting it, or letting anything less strong than actual death would be in its deterrent force, prevent her from obeying the swift impulse to the very end.  She had not taken any of her mistress’ money, when she fled.  Her only sin, she told herself, was leaving without notice.  She had only made a little bundle of her own worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied about her waist and hung beneath the skirt she wore.  There were not many of those clothes, so the dangling bundle did not discommode her when she dodged behind the cab, ran beside it (on the far side from the lodging-house) till it turned a corner, and then sought her perch upon its springs behind.  In her mouth were seven golden sovereigns, the hoard of her whole lifetime, barring some small silver and an Irish one-pound note stowed in her left stocking.  Her right stocking had been darned till it was nowise to be trusted with one-eighth of her whole wealth.  She had no dimmest thought of whither she was bound; she only knew that she would go, if Fate permitted, wherever Anna went, to serve her.

Arrived at the confusion of the railway station known as Waterloo, Herr Kreutzer helped his Anna from the cab, paid the cabman from his slender store of silver, hired a porter with another shilling to take all their luggage to the train and went to get their third-class railway tickets, keeping, meanwhile, a keen eye for anyone who looked to be a German of position, and noting with delight that in the crowd not one pair of moustaches stuck straight up beside its owner’s nose.  Slinking after him, at a slight distance, but near enough to hear quite all he said, came M’riar, and, when he had passed on, bought for herself a third-class ticket to Southampton.  Her keen eyes fixed upon the backs of the two folk with whom, without their knowledge, she had cast her fortunes, she then went into the train-shed and found a place, at length, in the next carriage to the one which they had entered.  Then she trained a wary eye out of the window, to make sure they did not change their minds and slip out and away without her knowledge before the train departed.

On the arrival in Southampton she waited in the railway carriage till she saw them started down the platform; then, again, she trailed them.  Two minutes after the Herr Kreutzer had purchased steerage tickets on the Rochester for far America, M’riar had bought one for herself.  When the German and his daughter reached the shore-end of the slightly-angled gang-plank leading to the steamer’s steerage-deck (close it was beside the steeper one which led up to the higher and more costly portions of the ship) she was not far behind them, trailing, watchful, terrified by the ship’s mighty warning whistle which reverberated in the dock-shed till her teeth were set a-chatter in an agony of fear of the mere noise.

At this point she nearly lost her self-control and let her quarries see her, for Herr Kreutzer, in his hurry and excitement, dropped one of his small hand-bags.  Almost she sprang to pick it up for him, through mere working of her strong instinct to serve him.  Indeed, she would have done so had it not been for a tall and handsome youth.