Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/271

Rh utterance to! Or how she started when a cat jumped from the sloping roof of the kitchen on to the grass-plot at the back of the house; or how my heart throbbed when I heard, or thought I heard, a board creak overhead! We were in a long and narrow room which seemed, curiously enough, to run crosswise of the house, opening on one side into the parlor, and on the other into the small bedroom, which had been allotted to my use.

"You live in this house alone, without fear?" I asked, as Mrs. Belden, contrary to my desire, put another bit of cold chicken on my plate. "Have you no marauders in this town: no tramps, of whom a solitary woman like you might reasonably be afraid?"

"No one will hurt me," said she; "and no one ever came here for food or shelter but got it."

"I should think, then, that living as you do, upon a railroad, you would be constantly overrun with worthless beings whose only trade is to take all they can get without giving a return."

"I cannot turn them away. It is the only luxury I have: to feed the poor."

"But the idle, restless ones, who neither will work, nor let others work"

"Are still the poor."

Mentally remarking, here is the woman to shield an unfortunate who has somehow become entangled in the meshes of a great crime, I drew back from the table. As I did so, the thought crossed me that, in case there was any such person in the house as Hannah, she would take the opportunity of going up-stairs with something for her to eat; and that she might not feel hampered by my presence, I stepped out on the veranda with my cigar.