ws-sheet.

"All right. Come along, Marty," she agreed, with assumed carelessness.

The boy was very moody. He stole glances at her only when he thought she
was not looking. Never had Janice seen the hobbledehoy act so strangely!

They plowed through the increasing snow up Hillside Avenue, and the snow
fell so rapidly that the girl was really glad she had come home. She
entered first, Marty staying out on the porch a long time, stamping and
scraping his boots.

When he came in he still had nothing to say. He pulled his seat to the
far side of the glowing stove and sat there, hands in his pockets and
chin on his breast.

"What's the matter with you, Marty?" shrilled Mrs. Day. "You ain't sick,
be ye?"

"Nop," growled her son.

That was about all they could get out of him--monosyllables--until
Janice retired to her own room. The girl was so anxious to get upstairs
and look at that paper she had recovered from the reading-room fire,
that she went early. When she had bidden the others good night and
mounted to her room, however, she did something she had never done
before. She unlatched her door again softly and tiptoed out to the
landing at the top of the stairs, to listen.

Marty had suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense,
dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he
said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body,
Marty! It ain't so--don't _say_ it's so!"

"Be still, 'Mira," commanded Uncle Jason's quaking voice. "Let the boy
tell it."

She heard nothing more but the murmur of her cousin's voice and her
aunt's soft crying. Janice stole back into her cold room. She shook
terribly, but not with the chill of the frosty air.

Her trembling fingers found a match and ignited the wick of the skeleton
lamp. She had, ere this, manufactured a pretty paper shade for it, and
this threw the stronger radiance of the light upon a round spot on the
bureau. She drew out the scorched paper and unfolded it in that light.

She did not have to search long. The article she feared to see was upon
the first page of the paper. The black headlines were so plain that she
scanned them at a single glance:

THE BANDIT, RAPHELE, AT WORK

A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week Execution in
Granadas District

TWO AMERICANS DRAW LOTS FOR LIFE

John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His Fellow-Prisoner,
Broxton Day, Fills