ience the sensations of a trapped animal. So vivid were
these, and so overpowering, as he measured his helplessness against the
girl's possible need of him, that he used all his will power in
overcoming them. Resolutely he reminded himself that he must keep cool
and steady. He would leave nothing undone that could be done. He would
shout at intervals. Perhaps sooner or later some night-watchman would
hear him. He would reach that trap-door if the achievement were humanly
possible. But first, last, and all the time he would keep cool.

When he had exhausted every resource his imagination suggested, he sat
in the straw, smoking and brooding, his mind incessantly seeking some
way out of his plight. At intervals he shouted, pounded, and whistled.
He walked the floor, and reexamined it and the cellar walls. He looked
at his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. He was exhausted, and
his body still ached rackingly.

Very slowly he resigned himself to the inevitable. Morning would soon
come. He must sleep till then, to be in condition for the day. He found
Shaw's blankets, threw himself on the straw, and fell into a slumber
full of disturbing dreams. In the most vivid of these he was a little
boy, at school; and on the desk before him a coiled boa-constrictor,
with Shaw's wide and sharp-toothed grin, ordered him to copy on his
slate an excellent photograph of Doris.

He awoke with a start, and in the next instant was on his feet. He had
heard a sound, and now he saw a light falling from above. He looked up.
A generous square opening appeared in the ceiling, and leading down from
it was the gratifying vision of a small ladder. Up the ladder Laurie
sprang with the swiftness of light itself. Subconsciously he realized
that if he was to catch the person who had opened that door and dropped
that ladder, he must be exceedingly brisk about it. But quick as he was,
he was still too slow. With a grip on each side of the opening, and a
strong swing, he lifted himself into the room above. As he had expected,
it held no occupant. What he had not expected, and what held him staring
now, was that it held not one stick of furniture.

Bare as a bone, bleak as a skeleton, it had the effect of grinning at
him with Shaw's wide white grin.

His first conscious reflection was the natural one that it was not
Shaw's room. He had been carried to another building. This room had a
window, which, of course, might have been concealed behind the