Chapter 3

it didn't matter much, and it would do just as well if she were to leave him behind in Edinburgh."

"You are not answering my question," the magistrate reminded her. "Where did you go that night?"

"They took us to a shop--a newspaper shop. It was a very high house, and there were lodgers. We were taken into an attic up at the top, and left by ourselves. In the night Duncan was very bad in his head, and screamed and jumped about, and in the morning I told Mrs. Donaldson that we must go to the hospital, for I was afraid Duncan would die. No one attended to him at all. She said we should, and we got into a carriage; but when I got out, and thought we were going to ask the people to take Duncan in, the other one came up and pushed me into the train before I knew anything about it."

"That is a strange story," the old gentleman remarked, looking searchingly into Elsie's face. He then asked her a great many questions about it, as if he hardly believed what she had told him, but Elsie persisted in her statements.

"Did you hear the name of the man who kept the shop?" he asked.

Elsie thought a moment. "Mrs. Donaldson told Meg to tell Andrew to write, and let us know how Duncan was. I don't know if she meant him."

"Ah! and who was Meg?"

Elsie felt ready to cry with vexation. "She came in the carriage to carry Duncan," she replied quickly. "I think she was a servant."

"Now, can you describe this house into which you were taken?"

Elsie drew quite a breath of relief to think she had escaped so well. "We had to go down a lot of steps before we got to it," she replied, "and I remember there was a flesher next door."

"You mean a butcher, and the house was a very high one, and the man's name, you think, was Andrew. Well, that is very good as far as it goes. Did you pass the Tolbooth in driving to the station?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't have known it if I had."

"Well, well, it seems you cannot tell us much about this house. The servant's name you say was Meg, and she had your brother when you last saw him. Where do you think he is now?"

Elsie explained Mrs. Donaldson's promise, and her threat that he should be turned into the streets to die if she displeased her. There was an audible murmur in the court, which made Elsie conscious for the first time that there were people listening to her. "I know she will do it," Elsie went on, catching her breath rapidly. "She may have done it now."

"You may rest easy about that," the magistrate said, kindly. "She is in a place where she can do nothing of the kind."

But Elsie was only half re-assured. The next moment, however, she had a new alarm in the question, "Did you ever hear the name of Lucy Murdoch?"

"Yes," Elsie faltered, very unwillingly.

The old gentleman looked at her suspiciously.

"Where did you hear it?" he inquired.

"In the house at Edinburgh."

"Well now, who did you hear speak of Lucy Murdoch?"

"Meg begged me not to tell, and I said I wouldn't," Elsie replied, in much distress. "Meg was very kind to Duncan."

"Ah well! you need not answer that question," the old gentleman said, with a smile. "Tell me your own proper name, and where your own mother lives?"

"Elsie McDougall. We lived on Dunster Moor," Elsie replied, with a conscious blush. "She made me call myself Effie Donaldson."

"A lovely place, too," the old gentleman said. "And you ran away? I hope you like it. Do you know that children who have run away have before now disappeared, and never been heard of again?"

Elsie only cast down her eyes in frightened silence.

"And what became of them, do you suppose?" he went on sternly. "Perhaps they were killed, perhaps they died of fright, and hunger, and misery. I should not like to say; only I know they never returned any more to their homes."

The stern words were too much for Elsie. The sense of her own loneliness and danger, her separation from Duncan, and the misfortunes she had led him into, came over her with overwhelming force, and she wept bitterly.

"It is fortunate for you that you have fallen into the hands of the law," the old gentleman added, more kindly. "You will be safe, and will by-and-by be allowed to go back to your mother. That will do."

She was then conducted out of the court by the officer who had brought her there, put into a cab, and driven back to the great court-yard, where she was once more delivered over to the charge of the woman. She spent the rest of the day in a dismal, ugly room, with a number of girls, who were rough and disagreeable and ill-tempered, and could not possibly have been more wretched. Her experience had made her distrustful of every one, so that she was dreadfully afraid of what might happen as the consequence of all she had betrayed. She was distracted, too, about Duncan, and altogether could find but meagre comfort in the promise that by-and-by she should be allowed to go back home again.