n regions beneath the house.

"Down here!" she said, taking a candle, lighting it and handing it to
me. "Go--I will follow."

I descended cautiously into the cold, dank place, discovering it to
be a kind of unlighted cellar hewn out of the rock. A table, a chair,
a lamp, and some provisions showed that preparation had been made for
concealment there, but ere I had entirely explored the place my pretty
fellow-fugitive rejoined me.

"This, I hope, is a place of safety," she said. "They will not find us
here. This is where Gustave lived before his flight."

"Gustave?" I repeated, looking her straight in the face.

She dropped her eyes and blushed. Her silence told its own tale. The
previous occupant of that rock chamber was her lover.

Her name was Luba--Luba Lazareff, she told me. But of herself she would
tell me nothing further. Her reticence was curious, yet before long I
recognised the reason of her refusal.

Candle in hand, I was examining the deepest recesses of the dark
cavernous place, while she lit the lamp, when, to my surprise, I
discovered at the farther end a workman's bench upon which were various
pieces of turned metal, pieces of tube of various sizes, and little
phials of glass like those used for the tiny tabloids for subcutaneous
injections.

I took one up to examine it, but at that instant she noticed me and
screamed in terror.

"Ah! sir, for Heaven's sake, put that down--very carefully. Touch
nothing there, or we may both be blown to pieces! See!" she added in a
low, intense voice of confession, as she dashed forward, "there are
finished bombs there! Gustave could not carry them all away, so he left
those with me."

"Then Gustave made these--eh?"

"Yes. And see, he gave me this!" and she drew from her breast a small
shining cylinder of brass, a beautifully-finished little object about
four inches long. "He gave this to me to use--if necessary!" the girl
added, a meaning flash in her dark eyes.

For a moment I was silent.

"Then you would have used it upon that Cossack?" I said slowly.

"That was my intention."

"And kill yourself as well as your assailant?"

"I have promised him," was her simple answer.

"And this Gustave? You love him? Tell me all about him. Remember, I am
your friend, and will help you if I can."

She hesitated, and I was compelled to urge her again and again ere she
would speak.

"Well, he is French--from Paris," she said at last, as we still stood
before th