dship, than with me and my
contempt."

He did not press the matter further, but if ever a man had murder in
his heart it was William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, when, a week
later, Robert Canler drew up before the farmhouse in his purring six
cylinder.

A week passed; a tense, uneventful, but uncomfortable week for all the
inmates of the little Wisconsin farmhouse.

Canler was insistent that Jane marry him at once.

At length she gave in from sheer loathing of the continued and hateful
importuning.

It was agreed that on the morrow Canler was to drive to town and bring
back the license and a minister.

Clayton had wanted to leave as soon as the plan was announced, but the
girl's tired, hopeless look kept him. He could not desert her.

Something might happen yet, he tried to console himself by thinking.
And in his heart, he knew that it would require but a tiny spark to
turn his hatred for Canler into the blood lust of the killer.

Early the next morning Canler set out for town.

In the east smoke could be seen lying low over the forest, for a fire
had been raging for a week not far from them, but the wind still lay in
the west and no danger threatened them.

About noon Jane started off for a walk. She would not let Clayton
accompany her. She wanted to be alone, she said, and he respected her
wishes.

In the house Professor Porter and Mr. Philander were immersed in an
absorbing discussion of some weighty scientific problem. Esmeralda
dozed in the kitchen, and Clayton, heavy-eyed after a sleepless night,
threw himself down upon the couch in the living room and soon dropped
into a fitful slumber.

To the east the black smoke clouds rose higher into the heavens,
suddenly they eddied, and then commenced to drift rapidly toward the
west.

On and on they came. The inmates of the tenant house were gone, for it
was market day, and none was there to see the rapid approach of the
fiery demon.

Soon the flames had spanned the road to the south and cut off Canler's
return. A little fluctuation of the wind now carried the path of the
forest fire to the north, then blew back and the flames nearly stood
still as though held in leash by some master hand.

Suddenly, out of the northeast, a great black car came careening down
the road.

With a jolt it stopped before the cottage, and a black-haired giant
leaped out to run up onto the porch. Without a pause he rushed into
the house. On the couch lay Clayton