could see. The two women bade him a cool, unmistakable
_Good-bye_, and left him in charge of the men who had just come down
from the shop above.

For half an hour Peter Brutus taunted him. It was all he could do to
keep his hands wrapped in the rope behind his back; he was thankful when
they returned him to his cell. The time was not ripe for the dash he was
now determined to make.

"Get a little nap, if you can," he said to Loraine, when the door was
locked behind him. "It won't be long before something happens. I've got
a plan. You'll have your part to play. God grant that it may work out
well for us. You--you might pray if--if--"

"Yes, I _can_ pray," she said simply. "I'll do my part, Mr. King."

He waited a moment. "We've been neighbours in New York for years," he
said. "Would you mind calling me Truxton,--and for Adele's sake, too?"

"It isn't hard to do, Truxton."

"Good!" he exclaimed.

She rebelled at the mere thought of sleep, but, unfastening her collar
and removing the jabot, she made herself a comfortable cushion of his
coat and sat back in her corner, strangely confident that this strong,
eager American would deliver her from the Philistines--this fighting
American with the ten days' growth of beard on his erstwhile merry face.

Sometime in the tense, suffocating hours of the night they heard the
sounds of many footsteps shuffling about the outer room; there were
hoarse, guttural, subdued good-byes and well-wishes, the creaking of
heavy doors and the dropping of bolts. Eventually King, who had been
listening alertly, realised that but two of the men remained in the
room--Peter Brutus and Julius Spantz.

An hour crept by, and another, seemingly interminable King was fairly
groaning under the suspense. The time was slowly, too slowly approaching
when he was to attempt the most desperate act in all this sanguinary
tragedy--the last act for him, no doubt, but the one in which he was to
see himself glorified.

There remained the chance--the slim chance that only Providence
considers. He had prayed for strength and cunning; she had prayed for
divine intervention. But, after all, Luck was to be the referee.

He had told her of his plan; she knew the part she was to play. And if
all went well--ah, then! He took a strange lesson in the language of
Graustark: one sentence, that was all. She had whispered the translation
to him and he had grimly repeated it, over and over again. "She has
fainted, damn h