The girl turned away and went into one of the few shops which had opened its shutters.

“You would not take Continental money yesterday,” she said to the proprietor; “but perhaps you—­you will—­I thought—­I have no other kind of money, but perhaps you will accept this in payment?” Janice, with a flushed, anxious face, unwrapped from her handkerchief and laid down on the counter the miniature frame.

The man took it up and eyed it for a moment, then raised it to his mouth and pressed his teeth on the edge; satisfied by the experiment, he scrutinised the brilliants.  “How d’ ye come by this?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Oh, indeed, sir,” explained Janice, growing yet redder, “it is mine, I assure you, given me by—­that is, he said I might keep it.”

“’Tain’t for me to say it ain’t yourn,” responded the shop-keeper; “but the times is bad times and there ’s roguery of all sorts going on in the city.”  He looked it over again, and demanded, “Who does ‘W.  H. J. B.’ mean?”

“I don’t—­I never knew,” faltered Janice.

“Then where ’s the picture that was in it?”

“I—­I took it out,” explained the girl, “not wishing to part with that.”

“That’s just what ye would have done if ye’d not come by it by rights, “replied the man.

“Then I’ll put it back,” hastily offered Janice, very much alarmed and flustered.  “I—­I never dreamed that—­that the picture would make it worth any more.”

“’T would have made it look more regular.  How much d’ ye want for it?”

“I thought—­Would five pounds be too much?”

The shop-keeper laid the frame down on the counter and shoved it toward Janice.  “No, I don’t want it,” he said.

“Would three pounds—?”

“I don’t want it at no such price,” interrupted the man.

“Oh,” bewailed the girl, “what am I to do?  The doctor said she was to have nourishing food; and I have nothing but a little corn meal left.  Would you give me one pound for it?”

“I tell ye, I won’t buy it at any price.  And I don’t even want it in the shop, so take it away.  And if you want to keep out of jail, I would n’t be offering it about; I’ve most a mind to call the watch myself, as ’t is.”

The threat was enough to make Janice catch up the bijou and leave the shop almost at a run; nor did her pace lessen as she hurried homeward, and, safely there, she fast bolted the door.  This done, with hands which trembled not a little, she replaced her portrait in the frame, hoping dimly from what the shopkeeper had said, that this would help to prove her ownership.  Yet all that day and the succeeding one she stayed within doors, dreading what might come; and any unusual noise outside set her heart beating with fear that it might portend the approach of a danger all the more terrible that it was indefinite.  As if her suffering were not great enough, an added horror was the army vans loaded with groaning wounded, which rumbled by her door during the sleepless night she spent.