Then she obeyed orders, curled up in her musty lair, and prayed.

Heavily nearer came the footsteps--walking--walking--walking--until the
girl feared she must cry out or faint. She bit through a lump of the
handkerchief he had tied round her neck for a stomacher--and then kissed
it.

Suddenly came a hoarse voice, foul words uttered in furious exultation,
and the feet were running--nearer--nearer--and once more--twice--the
thumping note of the big revolver.

Oh! the end was coming. Her breast was squeezed in, and her head
bursting. Hardly knowing what she did, she peered over the edge of the
beastly, uncovered little grave, just in time to see the black brute,
red-faced, in the cart-track; to see the blue arm swing, and a long
glitter in the air between them; to hear a horrible sound and see what
sent her back into her hole, with hands over eyes to shut out what was
already inside.

And then Dick's voice, and his hand helping her out.

Standing up, she looked at him. In his face there was no blood under the
brown, but his eyes were more content than she had seen them since just
before she opened the letter from Melchard--a hundred years ago.

Her eyes asked him the question she could not put into words, and he
nodded.

"You said I should, you know."

"You just had to, Dick," she answered.

He looked at her keenly.

"You're beat," he said. "Food's what you want; but 'The Coach and
Horses' over there, where I left my car, is the only place. We must go a
bit out of our way to keep out of sight of their damned house."

He went to the dummy to free the coat of its stuffing.

While he bent over, Amaryllis, fascinated yet repelled by what she could
just perceive lying in the path, crept towards it--and wished she had
not.

She was turning away when her eye was caught by a dull blue gleam from
something in the grass beyond the body lying face downward in the deeply
rutted track; and there grew in the dazed mind of the girl an impulse to
see what it might be.

Averting her eyes from the dead body, she stepped delicately, as if
fearing to wake it, to the other side of the way, and picked up the
revolver which Ockley had dropped in his fall.

Her heart gave a great pulse of delight. This was a thing which Dick
needed, and Dick must have everything he desired.

With an exclamation of pleasure she turned to take it straight to him,
forgetting the fearful thing in the road; seeing it but just in time to
avoid