boots land on the porch.

"Oh," she whimpered, snatching a blanket wrapper from a peg and
struggling into it. "Oh, the poor house! Jack! Jack! I'm coming to
help! Don't risk your life! I'm coming -- I'm coming----"

Terror clutched her as she stumbled downstairs on bandaged feet.

As she reached the door a great flare of light almost blinded her.

"Jack!"

And at the same instant she saw him struggling with three masked men in
the glare of the wagon-shed afire.

His rifle stood in the corridor outside her door. With one bound she
was on the stairs again. There came the crash and splinter of wood and
glass from the kitchen, and a man with a handkerchief over his face
caught her on the landing.

Twice she wrenched herself loose and her fingers almost touched
Stormont's rifle; she fought like a cornered lynx, tore the handkerchief
from her assailant's face, recognised Quintana, hurled her very body at
him, eyes flaming, small teeth bared.

Two other men laid hold. In another moment she had tripped Quintana,
and all four fell, rolling over and over down the short flight of
stairs, landing in the kitchen, still fighting.

Here, in darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket
wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs
again, only to discover that the rifle was gone.

The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang
inside and bolted the door.

Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She
got into it, seized her rifle and ran to the window just as two masked
men, pushing Stormont before them, entered the house by the kitchen way.

Her own door was resounding with kicks and blows, shaking, shivering
under the furious impact of boot and rifle-butt.

She ran to the bed, thrust her hand under the pillow, pulled out the
case containing the Flaming Jewel, and placed it in the breast pocket of
her shooting jacket.

Again she crept to the window. Only the wagon-house was burning.
Somebody, however, had led Stormont's horse from the barn, and had tied
it to a tree at a safe distance. It stood there, trembling, its
beautiful, nervous head turned toward the burning building.

The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling,
the sound of excited voices; Quintana's sarcastic tones, clear,
dominant:

"Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do
with a gentleman of the Constabular