was white, almost as her
muslin frock, and something in it persuaded me to climb over the
verandah-rail and follow her.

About thirty yards from the corner of the house stood a clump of
odorous laurels, the scent of which we had been inhaling while we sat
at tea. For these she broke away at a run, nor looked back until she
was well within their shadow and I had overtaken her.

"Good boy!" she said, nodding again and smiling at me with her
desperately anxious face. "I would wish--I would very much wish--to
kiss you. But you mus' not come a-near"--she sighed--"it is not
healthy. Only you come with me. I dream of you, sometimes, all las'
night. 'What a pity!' I dream, 'and you so pe-ritty boy!'
Now you come with me, and I take you away so he never find you."

The woman was evidently mad.

"Please tell me what you have to say," I urged, "and let me go back.
They will be missing me in a minute or so."

"If they miss you, it is no matter now. He will kill them all, he is
so strong . . . as he killed all those others . . . you remember?
See, now, pe-ritty boy, what I have done for you, to save you from
him! He shut me up, in his other house--he has another house away up
in the woods, beyond where we met." She waved a hand towards the
hills. "But I break out, and come here to save you. He would kill
me also, if he knew."

Mad though I believed her, I was growing pretty thoroughly
frightened, remembering the graveyard under the trees. "You forget
my friends," said I, speaking very simply, as to a child. "If he
means to kill them, I ought to carry them warning."

"He will not kill them till to-night," she answered, shaking her
head. "It is always at night-time, when they are at supper. There
is no hurry, little boy; but he will sar-tain-ly kill them, all the
same."

I turned my head, preparing to run, for I heard Captain Branscome's
voice in the verandah, calling my name.

"They are starting after the treasure. I must go," I stammered.

She drew close, and laid a hand on my arm. Again a dreadful odour
was wafted under my nostrils--an odour as of tuberoses, and I know
not what of corruption--and, as before in the graveyard, it turned me
both sick and giddy.

"They will not find it," she said, nodding with an air of childish
triumph. "Shall I tell you why? _I_ have hidden it!" Here she fell
back on her old litany. "He would kill me if he knew . . . I hid
it--oh, years ago! But come, and I will sho