ver the roofs.

He levelled his revolver and fired, but badly, for he was thinking of
Florence and his hand trembled. Three more shots rang out. The bullets
rattled against the old scrap-iron in the loft. The fifth shot was
followed by a cry of pain. Don Luis once more rushed up the ladder.

Slowly making his way through the tangle of farm implements and over some
cases of dried rape seed forming a regular rampart, he at last, after
bruising and barking his shins, succeeded in reaching the opening, and
was greatly surprised, on passing through it, to find himself on level
ground. It was the top of the sloping bank against which the barn stood.

He descended the slope at haphazard, to the left of the barn, and passed
in front of the building, but saw nobody. He then went up again on the
right; and although the flat part was very narrow, he searched it
carefully for, in the growing darkness of the twilight, he had every
reason to fear renewed attacks from the enemy.

He now became aware of something which he had not perceived before. The
bank ran along the top of the wall, which at this spot was quite
sixteen fee thigh. Gaston Sauverand and Florence had, beyond a doubt,
escaped this way.

Perenna followed the wall, which was fairly wide, till he came to a lower
part, and here he jumped into a ploughed field skirting a little wood
toward which the fugitives must have run He started exploring it, but,
realizing its denseness, he at once saw that it was waste of time to
linger in pursuit.

He therefore returned to the village, while thinking over this, his
latest exploit. Once again Florence and her accomplice had tried to get
rid of him. Once again Florence figured prominently in this network of
criminal plots.

At the moment when chance informed Don Luis that old Langernault had
probably died by foul play, at the moment when chance, by leading him to
Hanged Man's Barn, as he christened it, brought him into the presence of
two skeletons, Florence appeared as a murderous vision, as an evil
genius who was seen wherever death had passed with its trail of blood
and corpses.

"Oh, the loathsome creature!" he muttered, with a shudder. "How can she
have so fair a face, and eyes of such haunting beauty, so grave, sincere,
and almost guileless?"

In the church square, outside the inn, Mazeroux, who had returned, was
filling the petrol tank of the motor and lighting the lamps. Don Luis saw
the mayor of Damigni crossing the