othe the frail form before her. But they did not begin as a rule in
this fashion; here, though the mind wandered, was an absence of the
wildness to which she had become inured. Here--and yet as she listened,
as she looked, now at her mother, now into the dimly lighted corners of
the room, where those dilated eyes seemed to see things unseen by her,
black things, she found this phase no less disquieting than the other.

"Hush!" Madame Royaume continued, heeding her daughter's interruption no
farther than by that word and an impatient movement of the hand. "A
stone has fallen and struck one down. They raise him, he is lifeless!
No, he moves, he rises. They set other ladders against the wall. They
mount now by tens and twenties--and--it is growing dark--dark, child.
Dark!" She seemed to try to put away a curtain with her hands.

"Mother!" Anne cried, bending over the bed and taking her mother's
hand. "Don't, dear! Don't! You frighten me."

The old woman raised her hand for silence, and continued to gaze before
her. Anne's arm was round her; the girl marked with astonishment, almost
with awe, how strongly and stiffly she sat up. She marvelled still more
when her mother murmured in the same tone, "I can see no more," sighed,
and sank gently back. Anne bent over her. "I can--see no more," Madame
Royaume repeated; "I can----" She was asleep!

Anne bent over her, and after listening a while to her easy breathing,
heaved a deep sigh of relief. Her mother had been talking in her sleep;
and she, Anne had alarmed herself for nothing. Nevertheless, as she
turned from the bed she looked nervously over her shoulder. The other's
wandering or dream, or what it was, had left a vague disquiet in her
mind, and presently she took the lamp and, opening the door, passed out,
and, with her hands still on the latch, listened.

Suddenly her heart bounded, her startled eyes leapt upward to the
ceiling. Close to her, above her, she heard a sound.

It came from a trap-door that led to the tiles; a trap that even as her
eyes reached it, lifted itself with a rending sound. Save for the
bedridden woman, Anne was alone in the house; and for one instant it was
a question whether she held her ground or fled shrieking into the room
she had left. For an instant; then the instinct to shield her mother won
the day, and with fascinated eyes she watched the legs of a man drop
through the aperture, watched a body follow, and--and at last a face!

Claude's