Beatrix's face was
hidden in her arms; Thayer's eyes, turned now to the window, were fixed
upon the pitiless storm outside, while mechanically he sought to adjust
the regular ticking of his watch to the broken rhythm of the Famine
Theme which once more was haunting his brain.

Neither one of them faced the open door; neither one of them saw the
crawling, slinking figure, the pale, fear-stricken face, and the staring
eyes which appeared in the doorway, clung there for a moment and then
vanished again as noiselessly as they had come. Neither of them, had
they seen, could have imagined the fearful interpretation which the
delirium-stricken brain had put upon the silent scene.

The stir in the next room came again. Then it increased until the
cottage echoed with the tumult of struggle and of inarticulate crying.
Above it all, Lorimer's maddened voice rang out in piteous terror,--

"Let me go! I saw him! It's Thayer, and he will kill Beatrix! She is
afraid of him, and she is begging for mercy! He is killing my wife, my
Beatrix! Let me go! Beatrix! Beatrix! Dear girl, I'm coming!"

Beatrix sprang to her feet, as Thayer rushed to the inner room where the
words had ended in a fury of inarticulate shrieks. There was the sound
of a heavy struggle, when it seemed to her that the cottage rocked with
the rocking, writhing bodies of the men just beyond her sight. She dared
not face the scene in all its horror. She stood, erect and alone, in the
middle of the floor, while the struggle slowly died away and the shrieks
sank to the piteous low whimpering of an animal in pain. Then all was
still.

Weak by inheritance, weaker still by dissipation, Lorimer's heart had
yielded to the shock of his imaginary fear; but the last coherent
thought of his distracted brain had been that of protecting love for
Beatrix.

In the gray, cold light, through the silent cottage, the old butler came
to Beatrix's side and gently touched her arm.

"It is over, Miss Beatrix," he said gravely; "and may the good God be
pitiful to us all!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was mid-afternoon when Thayer once more entered the hotel. The
proprietor met him at the door.

"This message was just telephoned in, Mr. Thayer. The boy is getting
ready to carry it to the cottage."

Thayer tore open the envelope indifferently. Exhausted by the struggle
and the shock through which he had been passing, for the time being he
felt little interest in any word which cou