"Tell them all about it, Hilda," interposed her father in an agonized tone.
"Don't hold back anything."
"Oh—father—Otto—it was nothing. I didn't go in. He—Mr. Feuerstein—came here, and he looked so sick, and he begged me to come over to Meinert's for a minute. He said he had something to say to me. And then I went. But at the door I got to thinking about all he'd done, and I wouldn't go in. I just came back home."
"What was it that he had done, lady?" asked O'Rourke.
"I won't tell," Hilda flashed out, and she started up. "It's nobody's business. Why do you ask me all these questions? I won't answer any more."
"Now, now, lady," said Casey. "Just keep cool. When you went, what did you take a knife from the counter for?"
"A knife!" Hilda gasped, and she would have fallen to the floor had not Otto caught her.
"That settles it!" said Casey, in an undertone to O'Rourke. "She's it, all right. I guess she's told us enough?"
O'Rourke nodded. "The Cap'n'll get the rest out of her when he puts her through the third degree."
They rose and Casey said, with the roughness of one who is afraid of his inward impulses to gentleness: "Come, lady, get on your things. You're going along with us."