She[She] had no rags to conceal it among," said Stargarde reproachfully; “she had on a decent frock.”
“Well, what is your theory?” he said impatiently.
“She was angry and thought only of punishing you. The book must have fallen from your coat as you ran and she picked it up and is keeping it to tease you.”
“I will tease her,” grimly, “if she doesn’t give it up. Come, what shall we do? Get a policeman?”
“No, Brian, I will get it for you,” and she left him and went into her bedroom and put her hand to her head with a swift ejaculation, “O Lord, give me wisdom. They are terrible people—her parents. If they find the book on her they will not give it up.”
She looked around the room as if for inspiration. “I have it,” she said, snatching a little box from her dressing table. “Thank God for putting it into the hearts of kind friends to send me the wherewithal to do good.” Then taking a hat and cloak from a drawer, and rolling Zeb’s cap and shawl in a parcel, she went out to Dr. Camperdown and said quietly, “I am ready.”
He held open the door for her, and looked down approvingly at the large black dog that went silently out with his nose against her skirts.
They went up a street leading to the Citadel Hill, which crouched in the midst of the city like some huge animal turned stiff in the cold, its flanks covered with yellow, tufted, frozen grass, the great crown of the fort resting solidly on its brow. A few lights flashed at the top of the signal staff but the grim fortification sunk in the ground was outwardly dark and gloomy, though within they knew there were lights and fires and soldiers keeping ceaseless watch.
Near the Citadel was a tenement house, inhabited by nearly twenty persons. Stargarde knew them all, knew just which rooms they occupied, and on arriving in front of the building, she refused to allow Camperdown to accompany her within.
Very unwillingly he consented to stay outside, a little comforted to see that the dog slunk in after her like her shadow. Stargarde had requested him not to linger by the door, so he walked up and down the opposite side of the street, where there were no houses, surveying moodily sometimes the frozen glacis on one side of him, and sometimes the gaudy windows of the little eating and drinking shops on the other. A few soldiers in greatcoats passed at intervals up and down the street, but always across from him, and occasionally a man or a gayly dressed girl would swing open a shop door and let a stream of music and a smell of cooking food out on the night air.