reatly.

"Do you know why the police wished to arrest me, Alb dear?"

"How could I know that, Lois?"

"It was the Count who told them to do so. He is only deceiving you,
dear. He does not want to release my father and will never do so. If I
were in prison too, he thinks that Mr. Gessner would be quite safe. Do
not trust the Count if you would help us. My people understand him and
they will punish him some day. He has done a great wrong to many in
Warsaw, and he deserves to be punished. You must remember this, dear,
when he promises my father's freedom. He is not telling you the
truth--he is only asking you to punish me."

"But, Lois, what have you done, what charge can they bring against a
little schoolgirl?"

"I am my father's daughter," she said proudly, "that is why they would
punish me. Oh, you don't know, dear. Even the little children are
criminals in Warsaw. My father escaped from Saghalen and I have no right
to live in Russia. When he sent me to school here, I did not come under
my own name, they called me Lois Werner and believed I was a German.
Then my people heard that Count Sergius wished to have me arrested, and
they took me away from the school and brought me here. Herr Petermann is
one of my father's oldest friends. He has saved a great many who would
be in prison but for his kindness. We can trust Herr Petermann, dear--he
will never betray us."

Alban understood, but he had no answer ready for her. All that she had
told him filled him with unutterable contempt toward the men he had but
lately considered as his patrons and his friends. The polished, courtly
Sergius, his master Richard Gessner--to what duplicity had they not
stooped, nay, to what treachery? For they had sent him into Russia, not
to befriend this child, but to put the ultimate shame of a Russian
prison upon her--the cell, the lash, the unnamable infamy. As in a flash
he detected the whole conspiracy and laid it bare. He, Alban Kennedy,
had been chosen as their instrument--he had been sent to Poland to
condemn this little friend of the dreadful years to the living death in
a Russian prison. The blood raced in his veins at the thought. Perhaps
for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word anger.

"Lois," he exclaimed presently, "if Mr. Gessner does not set your father
free, I myself will tell your people. That is the message I am going to
send to him to-day. Count Sergius will not lie to me again--I shall tell
him so