cried Miss Campbell, her voice
ringing with indignation. "And I warn you that unless you wish to serve
a long term in the penitentiary, you'd better leave this place at once
with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you
well punished for this night's work. You've already broken into the
house and robbed our maid----"

"Who said I did?" shouted Lupo. "It was Frenchy done that, too. He's a
dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We've been puttin' up with
him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain't goin' to put up
with 'em no longer. They gona' be punished first, and then they gona'
give up that there home that ain't theirs by rights and leave this here
part of the country forever."

Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo's outburst. It only excited
him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.

And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with
the blows of a woodman's axe.

"Go up into the gallery, Phoebe," ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in
spite of her determination not to be frightened.

Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was
transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I believe that I will be saved from my
enemies. God is sending someone to save me."

But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up
their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the
mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New
Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a
belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to
shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And
now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come
even at the eleventh hour.

Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action
of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from
a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it,
but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who
entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of
the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.

"I'll shoot any man who comes into this room," called Billie. "Keep
out."

An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it
was Lupo's.

"That there old rusty gun ain't got no lo