“An’ I never knowd I was in the room with a corpse,” wailed Mother Guttersnipe, waking up.  “Cuss ‘er, she was allays a-doin’ contrary things.”

“How do you know?” said Calton, sharply, as he rose to go.

“I knowd ’er longer nor you,” croaked the old woman, fixing one evil eye on the lawyer; “an’ I know what you’d like to know; but ye shan’t, ye shan’t.”

Calton turned from her with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You will come to the Court to-morrow with Mr. Kilsip,” he said to Sal, “and tell what you have just now told me.”

“It’s all true, s’elp me,” said Sal, eagerly; “’e was ’ere all the time.”

Calton stepped towards the door, followed by the detective, when Mother Guttersnipe rose.

“Where’s the money for finin’ her?” she screeched, pointing one skinny finger at Sal.

“Well, considering the girl found herself,” said Calton, dryly, “the money is in the bank, and will remain there.”

“An’ I’m to be done out of my ’ard earned tin, s’elp me?” howled the old fury.  “Cuss ye, I’ll ’ave the lawr of ye, and get ye put in quod.”

“You’ll go there yourself if you don’t take care,” said Kilsip, in his soft, purring tones.

“Yah!” shrieked Mother Guttersnipe, snapping her fingers at him.  “What do I care about yer quod?  Ain’t I bin in Pentrig’, an’ it ain’t ’urt me, it ain’t?  I’m as lively as a gal, I am.”

And the old fury, to prove the truth of her words, danced a kind of war dance in front of Mr. Calton, snapping her fingers and yelling out curses, as an accompaniment to her ballet.  Her luxurious white hair streamed out during her gyrations, and with her grotesque appearance and the faint light of the candle, she presented a gruesome spectacle.

Calton remembered the tales he had heard of the women of Paris, at the revolution, and the way they danced “La Carmagnole.”  Mother Guttersnipe would have been in her element in that sea of blood and turbulence he thought.  But he merely shrugged his shoulders, and walked out of the room, as with a final curse, delivered in a hoarse voice, Mother Guttersnipe sank exhausted on the floor, and yelled for gin.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE VERDICT OF THE JURY.

Next morning the Court was crowded, and numbers were unable to gain admission.  The news that Sal Rawlins, who alone could prove the innocence of the prisoner, had been found, and would appear in Court that morning, had spread like wildfire, and the acquittal of the prisoner was confidently expected by a large number of sympathising friends, who seemed to have sprung up on all sides, like mushrooms, in a single night.  There were, of course, plenty of cautious people left who waited to hear the verdict of the jury before committing themselves, and who still believed him to be guilty.  But the unexpected appearance of Sal Rawlins had turned the great tide of public feeling in favour of the prisoner, and many who had been loudest in their denunciations of Fitzgerald, were now more than half convinced of his innocence.  Pious clergymen talked in an incoherent way about the finger of God and the innocent not suffering unjustly, which was a case of counting unhatched chickens, as the verdict had yet to be given.