an to come back a few weeks ago."

"Under what circumstances?"

"Under circumstances like those when--when I lost it."

"How do you mean?"

"I--I--" She turned slowly, as if drawn by some horrible fascination, and
looked at De Heidelmann-Bruck. The baron's face was ghastly white, but by a
supreme effort he kept an outward show of composure.

"Yes?" encouraged the judge.

"I was in another fire," she murmured, still staring at the baron. "I--I
nearly lost my life there."

The witness had reached the end of her strength; she was twisting and
untwisting her white fingers piteously, while the pupils of her eyes
widened and contracted in terror. She staggered as if she would faint or
fall, and the guard was starting toward her when, through the anguished
silence, a clear, confident voice rang out:

"_Alice!_"

It was the prisoner who had spoken, it was the lover who had come to the
rescue and whose loyal cry broke the spell of horror. Instantly the girl
turned to Lloyd with a look of infinite love and gratitude, and before the
outraged clerk of the court had finished his warning to the young American,
Alice had conquered her distress and was ready once more for the ordeal.

"Tell us in your own words," said the judge kindly, "how it was that you
nearly lost your life a second time in a fire."

In a low voice, but steadily, Alice began her story. She spoke briefly of
her humble life with the Bonnetons, of her work at Notre-Dame, of the
occasional visits of her supposed cousin, the wood carver; then she came to
the recent tragic happenings, to her flight from Groener, to the kindness
of M. Pougeot, to the trick of the ring that lured her from the
commissary's home, and finally to the moment when, half dead with fright,
she was thrust into that cruel chamber and left there with M. Coquenil--to
perish.

As she described their desperate struggle for life in that living furnace
and their final miraculous escape, the effect on the audience was
indescribable. Women screamed and fainted, men broke down and wept, even
the judges wiped pitying eyes as Alice told how Paul Coquenil built the
last barricade with fire roaring all about him, and then how he dashed
among leaping flames and, barehanded, all but naked, cleared a way to
safety.

Through the tense silence that followed her recital came the judge's voice:
"And you accuse a certain person of committing this crime?"

"I do," she answered firmly.

"You make this a