iabolically at me. His gaze shifted over my shoulder.
Instinctively I swung around as the dry snow crackled behind me.

I was a second too late, for I saw nothing but the looming figure of a
second ruffian and his upraised arm; then painless darkness seemed to
enfold me, and I was conscious of plunging down into a fathomless abyss.

CHAPTER VII

CAPTAIN DUBOIS

Clang! Clang!

It sounded as though some titanic blacksmith were pounding on a mighty
anvil to a devil's chorus of laughter. And I was bound to the steel,
and each blow awakened hideous echoes which went resounding through my
brain forever.

Clang! Clang!

The blows were rhythmical, and there was a perceptible interval between
each one and the next; they were drawn out and intolerably slow, and
seemed to have lasted through uncountable eons.

I strove to free myself. I knew that it was a dream from which I must
awaken, for the fate of the whole world depended on my awakening from
the bonds of sleep.

It would be so easy to sink down into a deeper slumber, where even the
clanging of the anvil beneath those hammer strokes would not longer be
heard; but against this was the imperative need to save--not the world
now, but----

The name was as sweet as honey upon my lips. It was something worth
living for. It was--Jacqueline!

The remembrance freed me. Dimly consciousness began to return. I knew
the hammering was my own heart, forcing the blood heavily through the
arteries of the brain.

That name--Annette--Jeannette--Jacqueline!

I had gone back to my rooms and saw a body upon the floor. Jacqueline
had killed somebody, and I must save her!

All through the mist-wrapped borderland of life I heard her voice
crying to me, her need of me dragging me back to consciousness. I
struggled up out of the pit, and I saw light.

Suddenly I realized that my eyes were wide open and that I was staring
at the moon over the housetops. With consciousness came pain. My head
throbbed almost unbearably, and I was stiff with cold. I raised myself
weakly, and then I became aware that somebody was bending over me.

It was a roughly dressed, rough-looking denizen of the low quarter into
which I had strayed. His arms were beneath my neck, raising my head,
and he was looking into my face with an expression of great concern
upon his own good-natured one.

"I thought you were dead!" I could make out amid the stream of his
dialect, but the remainder of h