but crying deeply, uncontrollably, and from her chest.

Harley's resolve was taken at once. He slipped on his clothes and went
to the door. His eyes were used now to the dark, and there was a window
that shed a half-light.

He stopped with his hand on the bolt, because he heard the low, wailing
note more plainly, and he was sure that it came from another room
across the narrow hall. He turned the bolt, but the door refused to
open. There was no key on the inside! They had been locked in, and for a
purpose!

Harley was fully aroused--on edge with excitement, but able to restrain
it and to think clearly. There was an old grate in the room, apparently
used but seldom, and, leaning against the wall beside it, an iron poker.
Tiptoeing, he obtained the poker and returned to the door. The lock was
a flimsy affair, and, inserting the point of the poker under the catch,
he easily pried it off and put it gently on the floor.

Then he stepped out into the dusky hall and listened. The woman was yet
crying, monotonously, but with such a note of woe that Harley was
shaken. He had thought in his own room that it was the old woman who
wept thus; but now in the hall he knew it to be a younger and fresher
voice.

He saw farther down another door, and he knew that it led to the room
from which came the sounds of grief. He approached it cautiously, still
holding the poker in his hands, and noticed that there was no key in the
lock. The woman, whoever she might be, was locked in, as he and his
comrades had been; but the empty keyhole gave him an idea. He blew
through it, making a sort of whistling sound with his puckered lips. The
crying ceased, all save an occasional low, half-smothered sob, as if the
woman were making a supreme effort to control her feelings.

Then Harley put his lips to the keyhole again and whispered: "What is
the matter? It is a friend who asks." There was no reply, only a tense
silence, even the occasional sobs ceasing. Then, after a few moments of
waiting, Harley whispered, "Don't be alarmed; I am about to force the
door."

The door was of flimsy pine, and it gave quickly to the poker's
leverage. Then, this useful weapon still in hand, Harley stepped into
the room, where he heard a deep-drawn sigh that expressed mingled
emotions.

There was a window at the end of the room, and the moonlight shone
clearly through, clothing with its full radiance a tall, slim girl, who
had risen from a chair, and who stood t