or foot, if her very life had
depended upon it.

Outside the wind blew dismally; the shutters creaked to and fro on their
hinges; the leafless branches of the trees tapped their ghostly fingers
against the panes.

Faynie tried to speak--to cry out--but her tongue seemed to cleave to
the roof of her mouth, powerless. Her hands fell to her side a dead
weight, her eyes fairly bulging from their sockets.

It almost seemed to the girl that she was passing through the awful
transition of death.

The blood in her veins was turning to ice, and the heart in her bosom to
marble.

In an upper room, afar off, she heard one of the servants coughing
protractedly in her sleep.

Oh, God! if she could but burst the icy bonds that bound her hand and
foot and cry out--bring the household about her. Her lips opened, but no
sound came from them.

The very breath in her body seemed dying out with each faint gasp that
broke over the white, mute lips.

Outside the night winds grew wilder and fiercer. A gust of hail battered
against the window panes and rattled down the wide-throated chimneys.
Then suddenly; all was still again!

Oh, pitiful heavens! how hard Faynie tried to break the awful bonds that
held her there, still, silent, motionless, unable to move or utter any
sound, staring in horror words cannot picture at the sight that met her
strained gaze.

It had only been an instant of time since the bright blaze of the gas
had illuminated the darkened corridor, yet it seemed to Faynie, standing
there, white and cold as an image carved in marble, that long years had
passed.

CHAPTER XXV.

"I INTEND TO WATCH YOU DIE, INCH BY INCH, DAY BY DAY!"

Before going on further with the thrilling event which we narrated in
our last chapter it will be necessary to devote a few explanatory lines
to the still more thrilling scene which led up to it, returning to the
real Lester Armstrong, whom we left in the isolated cabin in the custody
of Halloran.

Lester's intense anxiety when Kendale forcibly took the keys from him
and disappeared can better be imagined than described.

In vain he pleaded with Halloran to release him, offering every kind of
inducement, but the man was inexorable.

Your Cousin Kendale will pay me twice as much for detaining you here,"
he answered with a boisterous laugh, adding:

"Besides, I have a grudge against you of many years' standing, Lester
Armstrong, which this affair is wiping out pretty effec