and shuttered and
unoccupied both by day and by night. The only danger, he decided, was
from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close
by; but, though he did not know it, he was safe there also, for the room
was Coira O'Hara's.

He felt in his pocket for the pistol, and it was ready to hand. Then he
buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window. He held
his body away from the wall with one knee and went down hand under hand.
It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds in the
near-by trees. Before he realized that he had come to the lower windows
his feet touched the earth and he was free.

He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the
open, moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees. He made a
half-circle round before the house and looked up at it. It lay gray and
black and still in the night. Where the moonlight was upon it, it was
gray; where there was shadow, black as black velvet, and the windows
were like open, dead eyes. He looked toward Arthur Benham's room, and
there was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting
there, shivering probably in the dark. He wondered where Coira O'Hara
was, and he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with
sleepless, open eyes, looking into those to-morrows which she had said
she saw so well. He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring
her, but he caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out
of his mind. He did not dare think of her in that hour.

He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees toward the
appointed meeting-place. Once he thought of the old Michel and wondered
where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself.
Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep or pretending to
sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man's cupidity
and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful, or
faithless, as one chose to look upon it.

He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall
and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above. He was a little
before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp
ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned toward the dark and quiet
house.

The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamor. A
crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird's sleepy stir was the
sound of pursu