rder stepped up to
greet its driver, and then to open its doors. ''They will let the women off first,'' said
Miss Manning to me. ''Here they come, look.'' She moved forward, pulling her cloak
a little closer about her. I, however, hung back, to study the prisoners as they
emerged.
There were four of them—three girls, quite young, and one middle-aged woman
with a bruise upon her cheek. Each had her hands held fast and stiff before her in a
pair of handcuffs; each stumbled a little as she dropped from the van''s high back
step, then stood a second and gazed about her, blinking at the pale sky, and at
Millbank''s ghastly towers and yellow walls. Only the older woman seemed
unafraid—but she, it turned out, was used to the sight, for as the matrons stepped
up to chivvy the women into a ragged line and lead them off I saw Miss Ridley
narrow her eyes. ''You again, then, Williams,'' she said; and the woman''s bruised face
seemed to darken.
I walked at the rear of the little group, behind Miss Manning. The younger
women continued to look about them rather fearfully, and one leaned to murmur
something to her neighbour, and had to be scolded. Their uncertainty
reminded me of my own first visit to the gaol—less than a month ago, still; but
how familiar have I grown, since then, with the plain, monotonous routes, that once