addle
horse. The start was made. Slowly the five figures circled the hotel
and into the alley, to follow the tracks in the snow to a barn far at
the edge of town. They looked within. A horse and saddle were
missing, and the tracks in the snow pointed the way they had gone.
There was nothing necessary but to follow.

A detour, then the tracks led the way to the Ohadi road, and behind
them came the pursuers, heads down against the wind, horses snorting
and coughing as they forced their way through the big drifts, each
following one another for the protection it afforded. A long, silent,
cold-gripped two hours,--then finally the lights of Ohadi.

But even then the trail was not difficult. The little town was asleep;
hardly a track showed in the streets beyond the hoofprints of a horse
leading up the principal thoroughfare and on out to the Georgeville
road. Onward, until before them was the bleak, rat-ridden old
roadhouse which formed Laura's home, and a light was gleaming within.

Silently the pursuers dismounted and started forward, only to stop
short. A scream had come to them, faint in the bluster of the storm,
the racking scream of a woman in a tempest of anger. Suddenly the
light seemed to bob about in the old house; it showed first at one
window--then another--as though some one were running from room to
room. Once two gaunt shadows stood forth--of a crouching man and a
woman, one hand extended in the air, as she whirled the lamp before her
for an instant and brought herself between its rays and those who
watched.

Again the chase and then the scream, louder than ever, accompanied by
streaking red flame which spread across the top floor like wind-blown
spray. Shadows weaved before the windows, while the flames seemed to
reach out and enwrap every portion of the upper floor. The staggering
figure of a man with the blaze all about him was visible; then a woman
who rushed past him. Groping as though blinded, the burning form of
the man weaved a moment before a window, clawing in a futile attempt to
open it, the flames, which seemed to leap from every portion of his
body, enwrapping him. Slowly, a torch-like, stricken thing, he sank
out of sight, and as the pursuers outside rushed forward, the figure of
a woman appeared on the old veranda, half naked, shrieking, carrying
something tightly locked in her arms, and plunged down the steps into
the snow.

Fairchild, circling far to one side, caught her, a