Toole nodded hurriedly; and just then the maid came out to ask him to see her mistress.
'I say, my good woman,' said Lowe; 'just look here. Whose foot-print is that—do you know it?'
'Oh, why, to be sure I do. Isn't it the master's brogues?' she replied, frightened, she knew not why, after the custom of her kind.
'You observe that?' and he pointed specially to the transverse line across the heel. 'Do you know that?'
The woman assented.
'Who made or mended these shoes?'
'Bill Heaney, the shoemaker, down in Martin's-row, there—'twas he made them, and mended them, too, Sir.'
So he came to a perfect identification, and then an authentication of his paper pattern; then she could say they were certainly the shoes he wore on Friday night—in fact, every other pair he had were then on the shoe-stand on the lobby. So Lowe entered the house, and got pen and ink, and continued to question the maid and make little notes; and the other maid knocked at the parlour door with a message to Toole.
Lowe urged his going; and somehow Toole thought the magistrate suspected him of making signs to his witness, and he departed ill at ease; and at the foot of the stairs he said to the woman—
'You had better go in there—that stupid Lynn is doing her best to hang your master, by Jove!'