t with her
fingers until she had a picture of it in her mind. A picture that only
increased her hopelessness. Barehanded she could never hope to break
it down or push it aside. And above it and below, and on each side,
were the solid walls of stone.

She no longer knew what day it was. She scarcely knew if it were day
or night. But, setting herself something to do so that she would not
go mad, mad as Mad Ruth, she secured for herself another weapon.
Another bit of stone which her groping fingers had found and hidden
with her club; a jagged, ugly rock half the size of a man's head. Some
little scraps of bread and meat, hoarded from her scanty meals, she hid
in her blouse.

"If I could stun her, just stun her," she got into the way of
whispering to herself. "Not kill her outright--just stun her----"

At last, seeing that she must work her own salvation with the crude
weapons given her, Judith told herself that she could wait no longer.
Another day and another and she would be weak from the confinement and
poor food and nervous, wakeful hours. She must act while the strength
was in her. And, if Trevors had spoken the truth, if there were a man
to deal with outside--well, she must shut her mind to that until she
came to it.

Mad Ruth was gone again, and Judith stood by the thick door, her heart
beating furiously while she waited. It seemed to her eager impatience
that Ruth would never come back. Then after a long, long time she
heard a little scraping sound upon the rock ledge outside, the sound of
a quick step. And then, before she heard the snarling, ugly voice
which she had heard once and had never forgotten, she knew that this
time she had waited too long, that it was not Ruth coming.

One man--and there might be others. She stepped back to her bed, hid
the two weapons and waited. She must make no mistakes now.

The door was flung open. Outside it was dark, pitch-dark. But
evidently the man entering had no fear of being seen. He threw down a
bundle of dry fagots, and set fire to them. The blaze, leaping up,
casting wavering gleams to where Judith stood, showed her plainly the
twisted, ugly face of Quinnion, his red-rimmed eyes peering at her,
filled with evil light.

XXVI

JUDITH'S PERIL

"The better to see you by, my dear!" was Quinnion's word of greeting.
Judith made no answer. She drew a little farther back into the
shadows, a little closer to the things she had hidden among the