him until
far into the night, while the wild storm raged on and shook the solid
house to its very foundations. A tall tree in the yard was uprooted, and
a chimney-top came crushing down with a force which threatened to break
through the roof. For a moment there was a lull in the tempest, and,
raising himself upon his elbow, Arthur listened intently, while he said,
in a whisper which made Frank's blood curdle in his veins:

'Hark! there's more abroad to-night than the storm! Something is
happening or has happened which affects me. I have heard voices in the
wind--Gretchen calling me from far away. Frank, Frank, _did_ you hear
that? It was a woman's cry; her voice--Gretchen's. Yes, Gretchen, I am
coming!'

And with a bound he was at the window, which he opened wide, and leaning
far out of it, listened to hear repeated a sound which Frank, too, had
heard--a cry like the voice of one in mortal peril calling for help.

It might have been the wind, which on the instant swept round the corner
in a great gust, driving the snow and sleet into Arthur's face, and
making him draw in his body, nearly half of which was leaning from the
window as he waited for the strange cry to be repeated. But it did not
come again, though Frank, whose nerves were strung to almost as high a
tension as his brother's, thought he heard it once above the roar of the
tempest, and a vague feeling of disquiet took possession of him as he
sat for an hour longer watching his brother and listening to the noise
without.

Gradually the storm subsided, and when the clock struck one the wind had
gone down, the snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was struggling
feebly through a rift of dark clouds in the west. After persuading his
brother to go to bed, Frank retired to his own room and was soon asleep,
unmindful of the tragedy which was being enacted not very far away,
where a little child was smiling in its dreams, while the woman beside
it was praying for life until her mission should be accomplished.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRAMP HOUSE.

About midway between the entrance to the park and the Collingwood
grounds, and fifty rods or more from the cross-road which the strange
woman had taken on the night of the storm, stood a small stone building,
which had been used as a school-house until the Shannondale turnpike was
built and the cross-road abandoned. After that it was occupied by one
poor family after another, until the property of which it was a pa