ed in a gurgle, for Trent's hand was on his throat.

"Listen, you miserable hound," he whispered. "Take me to him this
moment, or I'll shake the life out of you. Did you ever know me go back
from my word?"

Da Souza took up his hat with an ugly oath and yielded. The two men left
the office together.

* * * * *

"Listen!"

The two women sat in silence, waiting for some repetition of the sound.
This time there was certainly no possibility of any mistake. From the
room above their heads came the feeble, quavering sobbing of an old man.
Julie threw down her book and sprang up.

"Mother, I cannot bear it any longer," she cried. "I know where the key
is, and I am going into that room."

Mrs. Da Souza's portly frame quivered with excitement.

"My child," she pleaded, "don't Julie, do remember! Your father will
know, and then--oh, I shall be frightened to death!"

"It is nothing to do with you, mother," the girl said, "I am going."

Mrs. Da Souza produced a capacious pocket-handkerchief, reeking with
scent, and dabbed her eyes with it. From the days when she too had been
like Julie, slim and pretty, she had been every hour in dread of her
husband. Long ago her spirit had been broken and her independence
subdued. To her friend and confidants no word save of pride and love
for her husband had ever passed her lips, yet now as she watched her
daughter she was conscious of a wild, passionate wish that her fate at
least might be a different one. And while she mopped her eyes and looked
backward, Julie disappeared.

Even Julie, as she ascended the stairs with the key of the locked room
in her hand, was conscious of unusual tremors. If her position with
regard to her father was not the absolute condition of serfdom into
which her mother had been ground down, she was at least afraid of him,
and she remembered the strict commands he had laid upon them all. The
room was not to be open save by himself. All cries and entreaties were
to be disregarded, every one was to behave as though that room did not
exist. They had borne it already for days, the heart-stirring moans,
the faint, despairing cries of the prisoner, and she could bear it no
longer. She had a tender little heart, and from the first it had been
moved by the appearance of the pitiful old man, leaning so heavily upon
her father's arm, as they had come up the garden walk together. She made
up her mind to satisfy herself at