e taken possession of him and
benumbed his limbs and his tongue.

Max was no coward. He was a daring rider, handy with his fists, a young
man full of spirit and courage to the verge of recklessness, as this
adventure had proved. But courage must have something to attack, or at
least to resist, before it can make itself manifest; and in this
sickening waiting, listening, watching, without the use of one's eyes,
there was something which smacked of the supernatural, something to damp
the spirits of the bravest man.

There was nothing to be gained, there was, perhaps, much to be risked,
by a movement, a step. So Max felt, showing thereby that he possessed an
instinct of sane prudence which was, in the circumstances, better than
bravery.

And presently he discerned a little patch of faint light on the floor,
which gradually increased in size until he was able to make out that it
was thrown from above, and from the corner above the rubbish heap.

Max kept quite still. The relief he felt was exquisite. If once he could
have a chance of seeing the man who was in the room with him, and who he
could not doubt was the person who had thrown him in, Max felt he should
be all right. In a tussle with another man he knew that he could hold
his own, and a sight of the ruffian would enable him to judge whether
bribery or force would be the better weapon with him.

In the meantime he watched the light with anxious eyes, determined not
to move and risk its extinction until he had been able to examine every
corner of the little shop.

And as he looked, his eyes grew round, and his breath came fast.

There was no counter left, no furniture at all behind which a man could
hide. And the room, except for the rubbish in the corner, a small,
straggling heap, was absolutely bare.

There was no other creature in it, dead or alive, but himself.

CHAPTER XII.

ESCAPE.

An exclamation, impossible to repress, burst from the lips of Max.

At the same moment he made a spring to the left, which brought him under
the spot in the floor above through which the light was streaming.

And he saw through a raised trap-door in the flooring above the shrewish
face of old Mrs. Higgs, and the very same candle in the very same tin
candlestick that he had seen in use in the adjoining room.

The old woman and the young man stared at each other for a moment in
silence. It seemed to Max that there was genuine surprise on her face as
she looked a