Chapter XXV: Down Among the Ghosts

“I cannot endure it,” she cried to herself a dozen times before morning. “I shall go mad if I have to see his face and hear his voice and feel that he is looking at me. There must be a way to escape from this place, there must be a way. I will risk anything to get away from him!”

At breakfast she did not see him; he had eaten earlier with Lord Bob. The others noted the hunted look in her eye and saw that she had passed a sleepless night. The most stupendous of Dickey's efforts to enliven the dreary table failed, and there was utter collapse to the rosy hopes they had begun to build. Her brain was filled by one great thought--escape. While they were jesting she was wondering how and where she could find the underground passages of which they had spoken and to what point they would lead.

“I'd give a round sum if I could grow a set of whiskers as readily and as liberally as Turk,” commented Dickey, sadly. “He came out of Phil's room this morning, and I dodged behind a door post, thinking he was a burglar. Turk looks like a wild man from Borneo, and his whiskers are not ten days out. He's letting 'em grow so that he can venture outside the castle without fear of recognition. I'd like to get outside these walls for half a day.”

“I detest whiskers,” decided Lady Jane.

“So do I, especially Turk's. But they're vastly convenient, just the same. In a couple of days Turk won't know himself when he looks in the mirror. I believe I'll try to cultivate a bunch.”

“I'm sure they would improve you very much,” said Lady Jane, aggressively. “What is your idea as to color?”

“Well, I rather fancy a nice amber. I can get one color as easily as another. Have you a preference?”

“I think pink or blue would become you, Dickey. But don't let my prejudices influence you. Of course, it can't make any difference, because I won't recognize you, you know.”

“In other words, if I don't cut my whiskers you'll cut me?”

“Dead.”

“Lots of nice men have whiskers.”

“And so do the goats.”

“But a brigand always has a full set--in the opera, at least.”

“You are only a brigand's apprentice, and, besides, this isn't an opera. It is a society tragedy.”

“Won't you have another egg?” he asked, looking politely at her plate. Then he inquired if Miss Garrison would like to join him in a climb among the rocks. She smiled wistfully and said she would be charmed to do so if she were not too feeble with age when the time came to start.

Consumed with a desire to acquaint herself with her surroundings, she begged her companions to take her over the castle from turret to cellar. Later in the day, with Turk carrying the lantern, she was eagerly taking notes in the vast, spooky caves of Craneycrow.

Vaulted chambers here, narrow passages there, spider-ridden ceilings that awoke to life as the stooping visitors rustled beneath them, slimy walls and ringing floors, all went to make up the vast grave in which she was to bury all hope of escape. Immense were the iron-bound doors that led from one room to another; huge the bolts and rusty the hinges; gruesome and icy the atmosphere; narrow the steps that led to regions deeper in the bowels of the earth. Dorothy's heart sank like lead as she surveyed the impregnable walls and listened to the mighty groans of long-sleeping doors as the shoulder of the sturdy Turk awoke them to torpid activity. There was surprise and resentment in the creak of grim old hinges, in the moans of rheumatic timbers, in the jangle of lazy chains and locks. The stones on which they trod seemed to snap back in the echo of their footfalls a harsh, strident laugh of derision. Every shadow grinned mockingly at her; the very darkness ahead of the lantern's way seemed to snort angrily at the approach of the intruders. The whole of that rockbound dungeon roared defiance in answer to her timid prayer, and snarled an ugly challenge to her courage.

Lady Saxondale and Dickey confronted two rather pale-faced girls when the party of explorers again stood in the sunlit halls above. Across their shrinking faces cobwebs were lashed, plastered with the dank moisture of ages; in their eyes gleamed relief and from their lips came long breaths of thankfulness. Turk, out of sight and hearing, was roundly cursing the luck that had given him such a disagreeable task as the one just ended. From the broad, warm windows in the south drawing-room, once the great banquet hall, the quartet of uncomfortable sight-seekers looked out upon the open courtyard that stretched down to the fort-like wall, and for the moment Dorothy envied Philip Quentin. He was briskly pacing the stone-paved inclosure, smoking his pipe and basking in the sunshine that had never penetrated to the horrors of Castle Craneycrow. Lord Bob was serenely lounging on a broad oaken bench, his back to the sun, reading from some musty-backed book.

“Oh, won't you let me go out in the sun for just a little while?” she cried, imploringly. A mist came over Lady Saxondale's eyes and Dickey turned away abruptly.

“As often as you like, Dorothy. The courtyard is yours as much as it is ours. Jane, will you take her through our fort? Show her the walls, the parapets, the bastions, and where the moat and drawbridge were when the place was young. It is very interesting, Dorothy.”

With Dickey and Lady Jane, Dorothy passed into the courtyard and into the open air for the first time in nearly a week. She felt like a bird with clipped wings. The most casual inspection convinced her that there was no possible chance of escape from the walled quadrangle, in the center of which loomed the immense, weather-painted castle. The wall was high and its strength was as unbroken as in its earliest days. Lord Saxondale joined them and explained to her all the points of interest about the castle as viewed from the outside, but Quentin quietly abandoned his walk and disappeared.

“It is as difficult to get out of Castle Craney-crow as it is to get in, I dare say,” observed Dorothy, looking with awe upon the grim old pile of rocks, they called a castle. Far above their heads stood the tower, from which she had seen earth and sky as if in a panorama, three days before.

“One might be able to get out if he could fly. It seems the only way, provided, of course, there were opposition to his departure,” said Lord Bob, smiling.

“Alas, I cannot fly,” she said, directly.

At the rear of the castle, where the stonework had been battered down by time, man and the elements, she saw several servants at work. “You have trustworthy servants, Lord Saxondale. I have tried to bribe one of them.”

“You see, Miss Garrison, they love Lady Frances. That is the secret of their loyalty. The chances are they'd sell me out to-morrow, but they'd die before they'd cut loose from my wife. By Jove, I don't understand how it is that everybody is won over by you American women.”

During the trip through the cellars, Dorothy had learned that the secret passages to the outside world began in the big chamber under the tower. Lady Saxondale had unwittingly confessed, while they were in the room, that two of the big rocks in the wall were false and that they were in reality doors which opened into the passages. One of the passages was over a mile long, and there were hundreds of steps to descend before one reached a level where walking was not laborious. The point of egress was through a hidden cave up the valley, near the ruins of an old church. Where the other passage had once led to she did not know, for it had been closed by the caving in of a great pile of rocks.

With a determined spirit and a quaking courage, Dorothy vowed that she would sooner or later find this passage-way and make a bold dash for liberty. Her nerves were tingling with excitement, eagerness and a horror of the undertaking, and she could scarcely control herself until the opportunity might come for a surreptitious visit to the underground regions. Her first thought was to locate, if possible, the secret door leading into the passage. With that knowledge in her possession she could begin the flight at once, or await a favorable hour on some later day.

That very afternoon brought the opportunity for which she was waiting. The other women retired for their naps, and the men went to the billiard room. The lower halls were deserted, and she had little difficulty in making her way unseen to the door that led to the basement. Here she paused irresolutely, the recollection of the dismal, grasping solitude that dwelt beyond the portal sending again the chill to her bones.

She remembered that Turk had hung the lantern on a peg just inside the door, and she had provided herself with matches. To turn the key, open the door, pass through and close it, required no vast amount of courage, for it would be but an instant until she could have a light. Almost before she knew what she had done, she was in the drafty, damp stairway, and the heavy door was between her and her unsuspecting captors. With trembling, agitated fingers she struck a match. It flickered and went out. Another and another met the same fate, and she began to despair. The darkness seemed to choke her, a sudden panic rushed up and overwhelmed her fainting courage, and with a smothered cry of terror she turned to throw open the door. But the door refused to open! A modern spring lock had set itself against her return to the coveted security of the halls above.

A deathly faintness came over her. She sobbed as she threw herself against the stubborn door and pounded upon its panels with her hands. Something dreadful seemed to be crawling up from behind, out of the cavernous hole that was always night. The paroxysms of fear and dread finally gave way to despair, and despair is ever the parent of pluck. Impatiently she again undertook the task of lighting the lantern, fearing to breathe lest she destroy the wavering, treacherous flame that burnt inside her bleeding hands. Her pretty knuckles were bruised and cut in the reckless pounding on the door.

At last the candle inside the lantern's glass began to flicker feebly, and then came the certainty that perseverance had been rewarded. Light filled the narrow way, and she looked timidly down the rickety stone steps, dreading to venture into the blackness beyond. Ahead lay the possibility of escape, behind lay failure and the certainty that no other opportunity would be afforded her. So she bravely went down the steps, her knees weakly striking against each other, the lantern jangling noisily against the stone wall.

How she managed to reach the chamber under the tower she could not have told afterward; she did not know at the time. At last, however, she stood, with blood chilled to the curdling point, in the center of the room that knew the way to the outside world. Pounding on the rocky walls with a piece of stone against which her foot had struck, she at length found a block that gave forth the hollow sound she longed to hear. Here, then, was the key to the passage, and it only remained for her to discover the means by which the osbtruction could be moved from the opening.

For half an hour, cold with fear and nervousness, she sought for the traditional spring, but her efforts were in vain. There was absolutely no solution, and it dawned upon her that she was doomed to return to the upper world defeated. Indeed, unless she could make those in the castle hear her cries, it was possible that she might actually die of starvation in the pitiless cavern. The lantern dropped from her palsied fingers, and she half sank against the stubborn door in the wall. To be back once more in the rooms above, with cheery human beings instead of with the spirits of she knew not how many murdered men and women, was now her only desire, her only petition.

The contact of her body with the slab in some way brought about the result for which she had striven. The door moved slowly downward and a dash of freezing air came from the widening aperture at the top, blowing damp across her face. Staggering away from the ghostlike hole that seemed to grin fiendishly until it spread itself into a long, black gulf with eyes, a voice, and clammy hands, she grabbed up the still lighted lantern and cried aloud in a frenzy of fear. The door slowly sank out of sight and the way was open but her courage was gone. What was beyond that black hole? Could she live in the foul air that poured forth from that dismal mouth? Trembling like a leaf, she lifted the lantern and peered into the aperture, standing quite close to the edge.

Her eyes fastened themselves in mute horror upon the object that first met their gaze; she could not breathe, her heart ceased beating, and every vestige of life seemed to pass beyond recall. She was looking upon the skeleton of a human being, crouched, hunched against the wall of the narrow passage, a headless skeleton, for the skull rolled out against her feet as the sliding door sank below the level. Slowly she backed away from the door, not knowing what she did, conscious only that her eyes could not be drawn from the horrifying spectacle.

“Oh, God!” she moaned, in direst terror. Her ghastly companion seemed to edge himself toward her, an illusion born in the changing position of the light as she retreated.

“Dorothy,” came a voice behind her, and she screamed aloud in terror, dropping the lantern and covering her face with her hands. As she swayed limply, a pair of arms closed about her and a voice she knew so well called her name again and again. She did not swoon, but it was an interminably long time to him before she exhibited the faintest sign of life other than the convulsive shudders that swept through her body. At last her hands clasped his arm fiercely and her body stiffened.

“Is it you, Phil? Oh, is it really you? Take me away from this place! Anywhere, anywhere! I'll do anything you say, but don't let that awful thing come near me!” she wailed. By the flickering light he caught the terrified expression in her eyes.

“You are safe, dear. I'll carry you upstairs, if you like,” he said, softly.

“I can walk, or run. Oh, why did I come here? But, Phil,” suddenly, “we are locked in this place. We can't get out!”

“Oh, yes, we can,” he cried, quickly. “Come with me.” He picked up the lantern, threw an arm about her and hurried toward the stairs that led aloft. Afterwards he was not ashamed to admit that he imagined he felt bony hands clutching at him from behind, and fear lent speed to his legs. Up the stairs they crowded, and he clutched at the huge handle on the door. In surprise, he threw his weight against the timbers, and a moment later dropped back with an exclamation of dismay. The door was locked!

“What does it mean!” he gasped. “I left it standing open when I came down. The draft must have shut it. Don't be alarmed, Dorothy; I'll kick the damned thing down. What an idiot I was to tell no one that I was coming down here.” But his kicking did not budge the door, and the noise did not bring relief. She held the lantern while he fought with the barricade, and she was strangely calm and brave. The queer turn of affairs was gradually making itself felt, and her brain was clearing quickly. She was not afraid, now that he was there, but a new sensation was rushing into her heart. It was the sensation of shame and humiliation. That he, of all men, should find her in that unhappy, inglorious plight, ending her bold dash for freedom with the most womanly of failures, was far from comforting, to say the least.

“Dorothy, I can't move it. I've kicked my toes off, and my knees are bleeding, but there it stands like a rock. We've got to stay here till some one chances to hear us,” he said, ruefully. “Are you afraid now?”

“Why didn't you spring the lock when you came down? This is a pretty pass, I must say,” she said, her voice still shaky, her logic abnormal.

“I like that! Were you any better off before I came than you are now? How were you going to get out, may I ask?” he demanded, coolly seating himself on the top step. She stood leaning against the wooden door, the diplomatic lantern between them.

“I was going out by another way,” she said, shortly, but a shudder gave the lie to the declaration.

“Do you know where that hidden passage leads to?” he asked, looking up into her face. She was brushing cobwebs from her dress.

“To a cave near the old church,” she replied, triumphantly.

“Blissful ignorance!” he laughed. “It doesn't lead anywhere as it now exists. You see, there was a cave-in a few decades ago--”

“Is that the one that caved in?” she cried, in dismay.

“So Saxondale tells me.”

“And--and how did the--the--how did that awful thing get in there?” she asked, a new awe coming over her.

“Well, that's hard to tell. Bob says the door has never been opened, to his knowledge. Nobody knows the secret combination, or whatever you call it. The chances are that the poor fellow whose bones we saw got locked in there and couldn't get out. So he died. That's what might have happened to you, you know.”

“Oh, you brute! How can you suggest such a thing?” she cried, and she longed to sit close beside him, even though he was her most detested enemy.

“Oh, I would have saved you from that fate, never fear.”

“But you could not have known that I was inside the passage.”

“Do you suppose I came down here on a pleasure trip?”

“You--you don't mean that you knew I was here?”

“Certainly; it is why I came to this blessed spot. It is my duty to see that no harm comes to you, Dorothy.”

“I prefer to be called Miss Garrison,” coldly.

“If you had been merely Miss Garrison to me, you'd be off on a bridal tour with Ravorelli at this moment, instead of enjoying a rather unusual tete-a-tete with me. Seriously, Dorothy, you will be wise if you submit to the inevitable until fate brings a change of its own accord. You are brave and determined, I know, and I love you more than ever for this daring attempt to get out of Craneycrow, but you don't know what it might have brought you to. Good heavens, no one knows what dangers lie in those awful passages. They have not been used in a hundred years. Think of what you were risking. Don't, for your own sake, try anything so uncertain again. I knew you were down here, but no one else knows. How you opened that secret door, I do not know, but we both know what happened to one other poor wretch who solved the mystery.”

“I didn't solve it, really I didn't. I don't know how it happened. It just opened, that's all, and then I--oh, it was terrible!” She covered her eyes with her hands and he leaped to his feet.

“Don't think about it, Dorothy. It was enough to frighten you to death. Gad, I should have gone mad had I been in your place.” He put his arm about her shoulder, and for a moment she offered no resistance. Then she remembered who and what he was and imperiously lifted angry eyes to his.

“The skeleton may have been a gentleman in his day, Mr. Quentin. Even now, as I think of him in horror, he could not be as detestable as you. Open this door, sir!” she said, her voice quivering with indignation.

“I wish I could--Dorothy, you don't believe that I have the power to open this door and am blackguard enough to keep you here? My God, what do you think I am?” he cried, drawing away from her.

“Open this door!” she commanded, resolutely. He looked long and earnestly into her unflinching eyes, and his heart chilled as if ice had clogged the blood.

“I cannot open it,” he said at last. With not another word he sat down again at her feet, and, for what seemed like an age, neither spoke. The lantern sputtered warningly, but they did not know the light of its life was ebbing away. They breathed and thought, and that was all. At length the chill air began to tell, and he plainly heard the chatter of her teeth, the rustling of her dress as her body shivered. He arose, stiff and cold, drew off his coat and threw it about her shoulders. She resisted at first, but he was master. Later his waistcoat was wrapped about her throat and the warm lantern was placed at her feet, but she never gave him one look of gratitude.

At intervals he pounded on the door until finally there came the joyous, rasping sound of a key in the lock, and then excited exclamations filled the ears of the two prisoners.

XXVI. “THE KING OF EVIL-DOERS”

“Turk has been in Brussels,” said Quentin to her on the day following her underground adventure. She was walking in the courtyard, and her brain was busy with a new interest. Again had the lonely priest passed along the road far below, and she had made him understand that he was wanted at the castle gates. When he turned off the road and began slowly to climb the steep, she was almost suffocated with nervous excitement. Her experience of the day before had left her unstrung and on the verge of collapse, and she was beginning to enjoy a strange resignation.

She was beginning to feel that there were terrors worse than those of the kindly prison, and that escape might be tenfold more unpleasant than confinement. Then she saw the priest, and her half-hearted attempt to attract his attention to her plight, resulted so differently from what she had expected that her nerves were again leaping with the old desire to outwit her captors. He was coming to the castle, but how was she to acquaint him with the true state of affairs? She would not be permitted to see him, much less to talk with him; of that she was sure. Not knowing what else to do, she went into the courtyard and loitered near the big gates, trying to appear at ease. She prayed for but a few moments' time in which to cry out to him that she was a prisoner and the woman for whom 100,000 francs were offered in Brussels.

But now comes Quentin upon the scene. His voice was hoarse, and it was plain that he had taken a heavy cold in the damp cellar. She deliberately turned her back upon him, not so much in disdain as to hide the telltale confusion in her face. All hope of conversing with the priest was lost if Quentin remained near by.

“I sent him to Brussels, Dorothy, and he has learned something that will be of vital interest to you,” Philip went on, idly leaning against the gate as if fate itself had sent him there to frustrate her designs.

“Don't talk to me now, Philip. You must give me time. In an hour, when I have gotten over this dreadful headache, I will listen to you. But now, for heaven's sake, leave me to myself,” she said, rapidly, resorting to deception.

“I'm sorry I have disturbed you. In an hour, then, or at any time you may feel like listening. It concerns Prince Ugo.”

“Is he--what has happened to him?” she demanded, turning to him with alarm in her eyes.

“It is not what has happened to him, but to one who was his intimate. The woman who warned me to beware of his treachery has been murdered in Brussels. Shall I come to you here in an hour?”

“Yes,” she said, slowly, the consciousness of a new dread showing itself in her voice. It was not until he reentered the house that she became fully possessed of a desire to learn more of this startling news. Her mind went back to the strange young woman who came to her with the story of the prince's duplicity, and her blood grew cold with the thought that brutal death had come to her so soon after that visit. She recalled the woman's voice, her unquestioned refinement, her dignity of bearing and the positiveness with which she declared that Ugo would kill her if he knew the nature of her visit to his promised wife. And now she was dead--murdered! By whom? That question burst upon her with the force of a heavy blow. Who killed her?

A pounding on the heavy gate brought her sharply to the project of the moment. She walked as calmly as her nerves would admit to the gate and called in French:

“Who is there?”

“Father Paul,” came a subdued voice from the outside. “Am I wrong in believing that I was called here by some one in the castle? Kindly admit me. I am fatigued and athirst.”

“I cannot open the gate, good Father, You must aid me to escape from this place,” she cried, eagerly, her breast thumping like a hammer. There was no interruption, and she could have shrieked with triumph when, five minutes later, the priest bade her be of good cheer and to have confidence in him. He would come for her on the next night but one, and she should be freed. From her window in the castle she saw the holy man descend the steep with celerity not born of fatigue. When he reached the road below he turned and waved his hand to her and then made his way swiftly into the forest.

After it was all over and relief was promised, her excitement subsided and in its place began to grow a dull contemplation of what her rescue would mean to the people who were holding her captive. It meant exposure, arrest, imprisonment and perhaps death. The appeal she had succeeded in getting to the ears of the passing priest would soon be public property, and another day might see the jubilant minions of the law in front of Castle Craneycrow demanding her release and the surrender of the culprits. There was not the joy in her heart that she had expected; instead there was a sickening fancy that she had done something mean and treacherous. When she rejoined the unsuspecting party downstairs soon afterward, a mighty weakness assailed her, and it was she, instead of they who had boldly stolen her from her home, that felt the pangs of guilt. She went into the courtyard where Savage and Lady Jane were playing handball, while the Saxondales looked on, happily unconscious of a traitor in their midst. For an instant, pale and remorseful, she leaned against the door-post, struggling to suppress the tears of pity and contrition. Before she had fully recovered her strength Lady Jane was drawing her into the contest with Dickey. And so she played cravenly with those whose merry hearts she was to crush, listening to the plaudits of the two smiling onlookers. It was too late to save them, for a priest of God had gone out into the world to herald their guilt and to deal a blow that would shatter everything.

Quentin came down a little later, and she was conscious that he watched the game with eyes in which pleasure and trouble fought for supremacy. Tired at last of the violent exercise, the trio threw themselves upon the bench in the shade of the wall, and, with glowing faces and thumping breasts, two of them laughed over the antics they had cut. Dorothy's lawless lover stood afar off, lonely and with the resignation of the despised. Presently he drew near and asked if he might join them in the shade.

“What a dreadful cold you have taken, Phil,” cried Lady Saxondale, anxiously.

“Commonest sort of a cold, I assure you. Damp cellars don't agree with me,” he said.

“I did not want your coat, but you would give it to me,” said Dorothy, as if called upon to defend herself for some crime.

“It was you or I for the cold, you know,” he said, simply, “and I was your protector.”

“Right and good,” agreed Dickey. “Couldn't do anything else. Lady needed a coat, had to have it, and she got it. Duty called and found him prepared. That's why he always wears a coat in the presence of ladies.”

“I've had your friend, the skeleton, buried,” said Lord Bob. “Poor chap, he seemed all broken up over leaving the place.”

“Yes--went all to pieces,” added Dickey.

“Dickey Savage, do you think you are funny?” demanded Lady Jane, loftily. “I would not jest about the dead.”

“The last I saw of him he was grinning like the--”

“Oh, you wretch!” cried the girl, and Dorothy put her fingers to her ears.

“Shut up, Dickey,” exclaimed Quentin. “Do you care to hear about that woman in Brussels, Dorothy?”

“It is of no great consequence to me, but I'll listen if you like,” she said, slowly.

Thereupon he related to the party the story of the finding of the dead woman in a house near the Garrison home in the Avenue Louise. She had been dead for two days and her throat was cut. The house in which she was found was the one into which Turk had seen Courant disappear on the night of the veranda incident at the Garrison's. Turk had been sent to Brussels by Quentin on a mission of considerable importance, arriving there soon after the body was discovered. He saw the woman's face at the morgue and recognized her as the one who had approached Quentin in the train for Paris. Turk learned that the police, to all appearances had found a clew, but had suddenly dropped the whole matter and the woman was classified with the “unknown dead.” An attendant at the morgue carelessly remarked in his hearing that she was the mistress of a great man, who had sent them word to “throw her in the river.” Secretly Turk assured himself that there was no mistake as to the house in which she had been found, and by putting two and two together, it was not unnatural to agree with the morgue officer and to supply for his own benefit the name of the royal lover. The newspapers which Turk brought from Brussels to Castle Craneycrow contained accounts of the murder of the beautiful woman, speculated wildly as to her idenity and termed the transaction a mystery as unsolvable as the great abduction. The same papers had the report, on good authority, that Miss Garrison had been murdered by her captors in a small town in Spain, the authorities being so hot on the trail that she was put out of the way for safety's sake.

But the papers did not know that a bearded man named Turk had slipped a sealed envelope under a door at the Garrison home, and that a distressed mother had assurance from the brigand chief that her daughter was alive and well, but where she could not be found. To prove that the letter was no imposition, it was accompanied by a lock of hair from Dorothy's head, two or three bits of jewelry and a lace handkerchief that could not have belonged to another. Dorothy did not know how or when Baker secured these bits of evidence, When Quentin told her the chief object of Turk's perilous visit to Brussels, her eyes filled with tears, and for the first time she felt grateful to him.

“I have a confession to make,” she said, after the story was finished and the others had deliberately charged Ugo with the crime. “That poor woman came to me in Brussels and implored me to give up the prince. She told me, Phil, that she loved him and warned me to beware of him. And she said that he would kill her if he knew that she had come to me.”

“That settles it!” exclaimed he, excitedly, the fever of joy in his eyes. “He killed her when he found that she had been to you. Perhaps, goaded to desperation, she confessed to him. Imagine the devilish delight he took in sniffing out her life after that! We have him now! Dorothy, you know as well as I that he and he alone had an object in killing her. You have only to tell the story of her visit to you and we'll hang the miserable coward.” He was standing before her, eager-eyed and intense.

“You forget that I am not and do not for some time expect to be in a position to expose him. I am inclined to believe that the law will first require me to testify against you, Philip Quentin,” she said, looking fairly into his eyes, the old resentment returning like a flash. Afterward she knew that the look of pain in his face touched her heart, but she did not know it then. She saw the beaten joy go out of his eyes, and she rejoiced in the victory.

“True,” he said, softly. “I have saved the woman I love, while he has merely killed one who loved him.” It angered her unreasonably when, as he turned to enter the house, Lady Saxondale put her arm through his and whispered something in his ear. A moment or two later Lady Jane, as if unable to master the emotion which impelled, hurried into the castle after them. Dickey strolled away, and she was left with Lord Bob. It would have been a relief had he expressed the slightest sign of surprise or regret, but he was as imperturbable as the wall against which he leaned. His mild blue eyes gazed carelessly at the coils of smoke that blew from his lips.

“Oh,” she wailed to herself, in the impotence of anger, “they all love him, they all hate me! Why does he not mistreat me, insult me, taunt me--anything that will cost him their respect, their devotion! How bitterly they feel toward me for that remark! It will kill me to stay here and see them turn to him as if he were some god and I the defiler!”

That night there was a battle between the desire to escape and the reluctance she felt in exposing her captors to danger. In the end she admitted to herself that she would not have Philip Quentin seized by the officers: she would give them all an equal chance to escape, he with the others. Her heart softened when she saw him, in her imagination, alone and beaten, in the hands of the police, led away to ignominy and death, the others perhaps safe through his loyalty. She would refuse absolutely, irrevocably, to divulge the names of her captors and would go so far as to perjure herself to save them if need be. With that charitable resolution in her heart she went to sleep.

When she arose the next morning, Baker told her that Mr. Quentin was ill. His cold had settled on his lungs and he had a fever. Lady Saxondale seemed worried over the rather lugubrious report from Dickey Savage, who came downstairs early with Phil's apologies for not presenting himself at the breakfast table.

While Quentin cheerfully declared that he would be himself before night, Dickey was in a doleful state of mind and ventured the opinion that he was “in for a rough spell of sickness.” What distresed the Saxondales most was the dismal certainty that a doctor could not be called to the castle. If Quentin were to become seriously ill, the situation would develop into something extremely embarrassing.

He insisted on coming downstairs about noon, and laughed at the remonstrances of Lord Bob and Dickey, who urged him to remain in bed for a day or two, at least. His cough was a cruel one, and his eyes were bright with the fever that raced through his system. The medicine chest offered its quinine and its plasters for his benefit, and there was in the air the tense anxiety that is felt when a child is ill and the outcome is in doubt. The friends of this strong, stubborn and all-important sick man could not conceal the fact that they were nervous and that they dreaded the probability of disaster in the shape of serious illness. His croaking laugh, his tearing cough and that flushed face caused Dorothy more pain than she was willing to admit, even to herself.

As night drew near she quivered with excitement. Was she to leave the castle? Would the priest come for her? Above all, would he be accompanied by a force of officers large enough to storm the castle and overpower its inmates? What would the night bring forth? And what would be the stand, the course, taken by this defiant sick man, this man with two fevers in his blood?

She had not seen or spoken to him during the day, but she had frequently passed by the door of the library in which he sat and talked with the other men. An irresistible longing to speak to him, to tell him how much she regretted his illness, came over her. There was in her heart a strange tenderness, a hungry desire to comfort him just the least bit before she took the flight that was to destroy the hope his daring and skillfully executed scheme had inspired.

Three times she hesitated in front of the library door, but her courage was not as strong as her desire. Were he alone she could have gone in and told him frankly that she would not expose him to the law in the event that she ever had the opportunity. But the other men were with him. Besides, his cough was so distressing that natural pity for one suffering physical pain would have made it impossible to talk to him with the essential show of indifference.

At last, in despair, she left Lady Saxondale and her companion in the courtyard and started up the stairs, resolved to be as far as possible from the sound of that cough. Quentin met her at the foot of the steps.

“I'm going to lie down awhile,” he said, wearily. “They seem to be worried about this confounded cold, and I'll satisfy them by packing myself away in bed.”

“You should be very careful, Phil,” she said, a suffocating feeling in her throat. “Your cough is frightful, and they say you have a fever. Do be reasonable.”

“Dorothy,” he said, pausing before her at the steps, his voice full of entreaty, “tell me you don't despise me. Oh! I long to have you say one tender word to me, to have one gentle look from your eyes.”

“I am very sorry you are suffering, Philip,” she said, steeling her heart against the weakness that threatened.

“Won't you believe I have done all this because I love you and----” he was saying, passionately, but she interposed.

“Don't! Don't, Phil! I was forgetting a little--yes, I was forgetting a little, but you bring back all the ugly thoughts. I cannot forget and I will not forgive. You love me, I know, and you have been a kind jailer, but you must not expect to regain my respect and love--yes, it was love up to the morning I saw you in the dining-room of this castle.”

“I'll create a new love in your heart, Dorothy,” he cried. “The old love may be dead, but a new one shall grow up in its place. You do not feel toward me to-day as you did a week ago. I have made some headway against the force of your hatred. It will take time to win completely; I would not have you succumb too soon. But, just as sure as there is a God, you will love me some day for the love that made me a criminal in the eyes of the world. I love you, Dorothy; I love you!”

“It is too late. You have destroyed the power to love. Phil, I cannot forgive you. Could I love you unless full forgiveness paved the way?”

“There is nothing to forgive, as you will some day confess. You will thank and forgive me for what I have done.” A fit of coughing caused him to lean against the stair rail, a paroxysm of pain crossing his face as he sought to temper the violence of the spell.

“You should have a doctor,” she cried, in alarm. He smiled cheerlessly.

“Send for the court physician,” he said, derisively, “The king of evil-doers has the chills and fever, they say. Is my face hot Dorothy?”

She hesitated for a moment, then impulsively placed her cool hand against his flushed forehead. Despite her will, there was a caress in the simple act, and his bright eyes gleamed with gladness. His hand met hers as it was lowered from the hot brow, and his lips touched the fingers softly.

“Ah, the fever, the fever!” he exclaimed, passionately.

“You should have a doctor,” she muttered, as if powerless to frame other words.