a force and menace that scattered the last remnant of
self-possession. Not an instant in the whole terrible day had been more
frightful to me, no, not the moment when I first heard the sliding of
this very panel and the sound of her crawling form approaching me
through the darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now
and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a
skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being
no other light in the room save that and the flickering, almost dying
flame, with which I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only
succeeded in lighting up his anxious and heavily bedewed forehead.

"Oh, oh!" was my moan; "this is terrible! Let us quit it or go around to
my own room, where there is an open door."

But he did not hear me. His efforts had become frantic, and he tore at
the wainscoting as if he would force it open by main strength.

"You cannot reach her that way," I declared. "Perhaps my hand may be
more skillful. Let me try."

But he only increased his efforts. "I am coming, Marah; I am coming!" he
called, and at once, as if guided by some angel's touch, his fingers
slipped upon the spring. Immediately it yielded, and the opening so
eagerly sought for was made.

"Go in," he gasped, "go in."

And so it was that the fate which had forced me against my will, and in
despite of such intense shrinking, to pass so frequently into that
hideous spot, where death held its revel and Nemesis awaited her victim,
drove me thither once again, and, as I now hope, for the last time. For,
there upon the floor, and almost in the same spot where we had found
lying the remains of innocent Honora Urquhart, we saw, as my
premonition had told me we should, the outstretched form of the unhappy
being who had usurped her place in life, and now, in retribution of that
act, had laid her head down upon the same couch in death. She was
pulseless and quite cold. Upon her mouth her left hand lay pressed, as
if, with her last breath, she sought to absorb the pure kiss which had
been left there by the daughter she so much loved.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A LAST WORD.

Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old lover to my inn on that
fatal night? That is the question I asked, when, with the first breaking
of the morning light, I discovered lying on the table under an empty
phial, a letter addressed, not to her husband, nor to her child, but to
him, Mark