ur determined that
the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love--I am bold enough
to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
tell us everything--all that you know--without fear, for now that we are
united no harm can assail us."

She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
to us the absolute truth.

Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.

Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.

All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
we were in real, dead earnest.

I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
peerless above all others.

With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
written to me.

In breathless eagerness I read as follows:

"Is it true, dear love--for I call you so in return--that you were
impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
the Princess as my fr