"The other prisoners!" gasped Marion, now turning as pale as her mistress and Kate.
"Ah, the fine friends you were with last night. One or two of them are well-known gaol birds, and the rest are not much better."
Marion looked at Kate and then at her mistress, as the policeman proceeded to turn out her box.
But Kate had not spoken since she saw the watches taken out of her bag, and sat staring in a sort of dazed stupor at what was going on.
"Kate, why don't you speak and tell them we were not with thieves?" said Marion indignantly.
But Kate shook her head. "I don't know where they came from," she said.
"But you know William Minn is a very respectable young man," said Marion, reproachfully.
But Kate did not seem to hear, and when the policeman told her to put on her bonnet and shawl she did not attempt to move. But she let Marion put them on for her, and then went downstairs with the rest, but said not a word in explanation of how the watches came into her bag.
Marion was crying bitterly now, and vehemently declaring her own and her cousin's innocence, but Kate did not cry or say a word, and the policeman looked at her in some alarm as he went to the door to send a colleague who was in waiting to fetch a cab to remove his prisoners. Crying he was used to, but he did not understand this silence, and knew not what to think of it.
He told Mrs. Maple while he was waiting for the cab where he was going to take the girls, and that Marion's father would be permitted to see them if he came to the prison in the course of the day. They would be examined before the magistrate the next morning with the other prisoners who had been taken at the theatre, and perhaps by that time Kate would confess who had given her the watches. But, alas! before the next morning Kate had to be removed to the prison infirmary, and her mother was sent for by Marion's father, who was so overwhelmed with trouble at what had befallen his daughter and niece that he hardly knew what to do.