e girl, with one hand on her hip and
with the candle held in the other, leaning against the whitewashed wall,
with a smile of amusement on her thin face.

What a face it was! Expressive as no other face he had ever seen, and
wearing now a look of what seemed to Max diabolical intelligence and
malice. She nodded at him mockingly.

"I can't get out!" thundered he, threateningly, with another thump at
the door.

The girl answered in the low voice she always used; by contrast with his
menacing tones it seemed lower than ever:

"I don't mean you to--yet. I guessed you'd want to go pretty soon, so I
locked the door."

CHAPTER VIII.

FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.

"By Jove!" muttered Max. Then, with a sudden outburst of energy,
inspired by indignation at the trap in which he found himself, he dashed
across the floor to the zinc pail he had previously noticed, and
swinging it round his head, was about to make such an attack upon the
door as its old timbers could scarcely have resisted, when the girl
suddenly shot between him and the door, placing herself with her back to
it and her arms spread out, so quickly that he only missed by a hair's
breadth dealing her such a blow as would undoubtedly have split her
skull.

In the effort to avoid this, Max, checking himself, staggered and
slipped, falling on the brick floor, pail and all.

"Oh, I am sorry! So sorry!"

Again the oddly expressive face had changed completely. Her scarlet
lips--those vividly red lips which go with an opaque white skin--were
instantly parted with genuine terror. Her eyes looked soft and shining,
full of tender feminine kindness and sympathy. Down she went on her
knees beside him, asking anxiously:

"Are you hurt? Oh, I know your wrist is hurt!"

Max gave her a glance, the result of which was that he began to feel
more afraid of her than of the locked door. About this strange, almost
uncannily beautiful child of the riverside slum there was a fascination
which appealed to him more and more. The longer he looked at the wide,
light-blue eyes, listened to the hoarse but moving voice, the more
valiantly he had to struggle against the spell which he felt her to be
casting upon him.

"I've strained my wrist a little, I think. Nothing to matter," said he.

But as he moved he found that the wrist gave him pain. He got up from
the floor, and stood with his left hand clasping the injured right
wrist, not so eager as before to make his escape