ismay and his shout of mad triumph rang out simultaneously, and never
have I seen such an ebullition of opposing passions as I was made
witness to as his hand closed over this small fortune and their staring
eyes met in the mortal struggle they had now entered upon for its
ultimate possession.

"She was the first to speak. 'It was given to me; it was meant for me.
If I keep it, both of us will profit by it, but if you----'

"He did not wait for her to finish. 'Where did you get it?' he cried.
'I can break the bank with what I can raise on this bond at the club.
Darraugh's in town. You know what that means. Luck's in the air, and
with an hundred dollars--But I've no time to talk. I came for a dollar,
a fifty-cent piece, a dime even, and I go back with a bond worth----'

"But she was already between him and the door. 'You will never carry
that bond out of this house,' she whispered in the tone which goes
further than any cry. 'I have not held it in my hand to see it follow
every other good thing I have had in life. I will not, Henry. Take that
bond and sink it as you have all the rest and I fall at your feet a dead
woman. I will never survive the destruction of my last hope.'

"He was cowed--for a moment, that is; she looked so superb and so
determined. Then all that was mean and despicable in his thinly veneered
nature came to the surface, and, springing forward with an oath, he was
about to push her aside, when, without the moving of a finger on her
part, he reeled back, recovered himself, caught at a chair, missed it
and fell heavily to the floor.

"'My God, I thank thee!' was the exclamation with which she broke
from the trance of terror into which she had been thrown by his sudden
attempt to pass her; and without a glance at his face, which to me
looked like the face of a dead man, she tore the paper from his hand and
stood looking about her with a wild and searching gaze, in the desperate
hope that somehow the walls would open and offer her a safe place of
concealment for the precious sheet of paper. Meanwhile I had crept near
the prostrate man. He was breathing, but was perfectly unconscious.

"'Don't you mean to do something for him?' I asked. 'He may die.'

"She met my question with the dazed air of one suddenly awakened. 'No,
he'll not die, but he'll not come to for some minutes, and this must be
hidden first. But where? where? I cannot trust it on my person or in any
place a man like him would search. I m