ched, in
lofty silence, her rectangle of sunlight.

But from the preparations of Dick Bellamy dignity was altogether absent.

From the dirty cloth he unwrapped Mut-mut's baag-nouk, slipped his right
hand into its straps and rings, and sank to his knees on the floor of
the carriage, facing the door and its open, unblinded window.

Leaning to his right, he lifted the corner blind away, bringing his left
cheek against the glass; and from this spy-hole kept that eye on the
point where the door of the next compartment should just show itself,
were it opened at right-angles to the train in letting a man creep out
upon the footboard.

And then, as he waited, came a dreadful thought: the door on this side
of the compartment, the train running on the left-hand track, was
hinged, of course, upon its forward jamb, and must therefore be passed,
by one creeping from the direction of the engine, before it could be
opened so as to give entrance. On the other side the position was
reversed.

Might not this advantage of the door defended only by the girl have been
noted by the men on the other side of that partition?

And she? Her back was to the engine and her corner blind pulled down.
She would see nothing till her door began to open; and even had she
nerve for killing, she could not shoot; for, in pity of her white hands,
he had fixed the safety-catch of Melchard's gun.

He pictured the moment's wavering, and a struggle, ending, perhaps, in a
double fall from the train.

While still his eye was steady at the loophole, his mind reached the
decision to change his dispositions. But before he could move to rise
the black, upright line of the enemy's door swung slowly into his field
of vision. His position at the window gave him a bare inch to see it in,
but the sight lifted his fighting soul into the heaven of certain
success.

Still watching, he saw that the door's edge remained steady, fixed, he
argued, by the hand of the man that watched his companion, too low for
Dick's line of sight, handing himself along by the brass rail, nearer
and nearer.

While that door was held, Amaryllis was safe.

Dick sank back upon his haunches, bowing his bare head to bring it below
the level of the open window.

There followed a stillness of waiting--stillness wrapped in the roar of
the train.

A brushing sound on the door's window-ledge!

Throwing his head backwards, Dick saw, without raising his head, thick,
dirty fingers on the spl