ete
silence over his work, and answered questions only with a brief yes or
no. Sometimes he did not answer them at all. The old Michel came twice
daily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened into
dumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him. He shambled
hastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and as
soon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him. Sometimes
Michel brought in the meals, sometimes his wife, a creature so like him
that the two might well have passed for twin survivors of some unknown
race; sometimes--thrice altogether in that first week--Coira O'Hara
brought the tray, and she was as silent as the others.

So Ste. Marie was left alone to get through the interminable days as
best he might, and ever afterward the week remained in his memory as a
sort of nightmare. Lying idle in his bed, he evolved many surprising and
fantastic schemes for escape, for getting word to the outside world of
his presence here, and one by one he gave them up in disgust as their
impossibility forced itself upon him. Plans and schemes were useless
while he lay bedridden, unfamiliar even with the house wherein he dwelt,
with the garden and park that surrounded it.

As for aid from any of the inmates of the place, that was to be laughed
at. They were engaged together in a scheme so desperate that failure
must mean utter ruin to them all. He sometimes wondered if the two
servants could be bribed. Avarice unmistakable gleamed from their
little, glittering, ratlike eyes, but he was sure that they would sell
out for no small sum, and in so far as he could remember there had been
in his pockets, when he came here, not more than five or six louis.
Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily
offices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a
closet across from his bed. He had seen them there once when the
closet-door was open.

Any help that might come to him must come from outside--and what help
was to be expected there? Over and over again he reminded himself of how
little Richard Hartley knew. He might suspect Stewart of complicity in
this new disappearance, but how was he to find out anything definite?
How was any one to do so?

It was at such times as this, when brain and nerves were strained and
worn almost to breaking-point, that Ste. Marie had occasion to be
grateful for the Southern blood that was in him, the strong tinge of
f