st of murder was drawing people
to its center as a cyclone sucks in leaves. Fright in Arden Wilmot's
face, revealed to Adelaide in the light streaming from the big
drawing-room windows. A group--a crowd--a multitude--pouring upon the
lawns from every direction--swirling round Arden as he stood over the
prostrate intermingled forms of his sister and her dead lover.

Then Adelaide, clinging to the door frame to steady herself, heard Arden
say in a loud blustering voice: "I found this fellow insulting my sister,
and I treated him as a Wilmot always treats an insult." And as the words
reached her, they fired her. All her weakness, all her sense of
helplessness fled.

Out of the circle came a man bearing unconscious Estelle, blood upon her
face, upon her bosom, blood dripping from her hands. "Where shall I take
her?" asked the man of Adelaide. "A doctor's been sent for."

"Into the hall--on the sofa--at the end--and watch by her," said Del, in
quick, jerking tones. Her eyes were ablaze, her breath came in gusts.
Without waiting to see where he went with his burden, she rushed down the
broad steps and through the crowd, pushing them this way and that. She
faced Arden Wilmot--not a lady, but a woman, a flaming torch of outraged
human feeling.

"You lie!" she cried, and he seemed to wither before her. "You lie about
him and about her! You, with the very clothes you're dressed in, the very
liquor you're drunk with, the very pistol that shot him down, paid for by
_her_ earnings! He never offended you--not by look or word. You murdered
him--I saw--heard. You murdered the man she was to marry, the man she
loved--murdered him because she loved him. Look at him!"

The crowd widened its circle before the sweep of her arm. Lorry's
blood-stained body came into view. His face, beautiful and, in its pale
calm, stronger than life, was open to the paling sky. "There lies a man,"
she sobbed, and her tears were of the kind that make the fires of passion
burn the fiercer. "A man any woman with a woman's heart would have been
proud to be loved by. And you--you've murdered him!"

"Take care, Mrs. Hargrave," a voice whispered in her ear. "They'll
lynch him."

"And why not?" she cried out. "Why should such a creature live?"

A hundred men were reaching for Arden, and from the crowd rose that
hoarse, low, hideous sound which is the first deep bay of the unleashed
blood-madness. "No, no!" she begged in horror, and waved them back.

"Adelai