hten Dolly
he was much mistaken. She faced him calmly.

"You can't make me tell you anything, even if you do hit me," she said.
"And you won't find Bessie, either, unless she wants you to. I saw her
go--but I'm not going to tell you how she managed it."

"Oh, I'm not going to hit her," yelled Holmes. "What good would that
do?"

He sprang to a bell, and pushed it violently. In a moment two or three
of the men he had dismissed, thus giving Bessie her chance to escape,
answered his summons, and he ordered them to start in search of her at
once.

"Find her, and you'll be rewarded," he shouted. "But if you don't, I'll
make you pay for it!"

Eleanor had never seen a man in such a furious rage. It was plain that
his plan, successful as it seemed to be, was still in danger of being
upset, and the knowledge gave Eleanor new hope. It had seemed to her
that, with Trenwith turned traitor, there was not one chance in a
million to foil Holmes this time. But now everything was changed. He
stayed with them only long enough to give them into the keeping of the
servant, who came down the stairs just as he finished giving his orders
to the men for the pursuit of Bessie.

"If any of them get out, I'll know it's your fault," he said to her.
"And you know what I can do to you. You wouldn't like to go to jail for
a few years, I guess. You will, if anyone else gets away from this house
to-night."

Then he followed the men he had sent out in search of Bessie.

And all the time Bessie herself had heard every word, and seen every
action of the scene that followed the discovery of her escape. While
Holmes was talking to Eleanor she had seized the chance to slip over to
a heavily curtained window, which, she guessed, must open right on the
ground.

She took the chance of it being open, and fortune favored her. Concealed
by the curtain, she was able to slip out, and then, instead of running
as fast and as far as she could, as nine people out of ten would have
done, she stayed where she was. She reasoned that there, so close to the
house, was the last place where search would be made.

And she was right. She saw Holmes dash from the room; she saw Eleanor
and the other girls being led upstairs. And then she not only heard, but
saw the pursuit of her that was begun. Men with lanterns searched the
grounds; they looked behind every bush. But, though a single glance,
almost, would have revealed her had anything like a careful search of
the f