room. With a gesture of
impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all,
out of the window into the garden below.

Then for another hour he sat alone in the darkness of his room, watchful
and patient. He drew up the curtain toward Alma's room. There was a
light there, and he sat gazing at her white curtain till the light was
extinguished. The other lights were all put out one after the other, and
then it became very still.

The clock struck ten. The gathering storm climbed higher up the western
sky. The lightning flashed brighter and brighter. There was a sigh in
the tree tops as if the air stirred uneasily.

Suddenly there was another light. Mr. Belford's curtain was brightly
illuminated by his candle. Elmer moved his chair so that he could watch
the window, and waited patiently till the light was put out. Then he saw
the curtain raised and the window drawn down.

"All right, my boy! That's just what I wanted. Nemesis has a clear road,
and her shadowy sword shall reach you. Now for the closed circuit
alarm."

He silently pulled off his shoes, and then, with the tread of a cat, he
felt about his room till he found on the table two delicate coils of
fine insulated wire, and a couple of tacks. Carefully opening the door,
he crept down stairs and through the hall to the door of the library.
The door was closed, and kneeling down on the mat he pushed a tack into
the door near the jamb and stuck the other in the door post. From one to
another he stretched a bit of insulated wire. Then, aided by the glare
of the flashes of lightning, that had now grown bright and frequent, he
laid the wires under the mat and along the floor to the foot of the
stairs. Then in his stockinged feet he crept upward, dropping the wires
over into the well of the stairway as he went. In a moment or two the
wires were traced along the floor of the upper entry and under the door
into his room. Here they were secured to a small battery, and connected
with a tiny electric bell that stood on the mantle shelf. To stifle its
sound in case it rang, he threw his straw hat over the bell, and then he
felt sure that at least one part of his work was done.

Louder and louder rolled the thunder. The lightning flashed brightly and
lit up the bare, mean little room where the wretch cowered and shivered
in the bed, sleepless and fearful he knew not why. He feared the storm
and the night. He feared everything. His guilty heart made terro