when I have finished this. You can see my window from over the
wall. If the light is in front you must climb the wall, for they will
leave the gate locked. I shall see you and will bribe Jose to let me
out for a turn. He has done it before for a bottle of wine. I can manage
him. Can I trust to you? If you break your promise--but you will not?
One of them would as soon kill me as smoke a cigarette, and the rest are
under his thumb. I dare not write more. But my life is in your hands.

"EVA DENISON."

"Oh! beware of the woman Braithwaite; she is about the worst of the
gang."

I could have burst out crying in my bitter discomfiture, mortification,
and alarm: to think that her life was in my hands, and that it depended,
not on that prompt action which was the one course I had contemplated,
but on twenty-four hours of resolute inactivity! I would not think it.
I refused the condition. It took away my one prop, my one stay, that
prospect of immediate measures which alone preserved in me such coolness
as I had retained until now. I was cool no longer; where I had relied
on practical direction I was baffled and hindered and driven mad; on my
honor believe I was little less for some moments, groaning, cursing,
and beating the air with impotent fists--in one of them my poor love's
letter crushed already to a ball.

Danger and difficulty I had been prepared to face; but the task that I
was set was a hundred-fold harder than any that had whirled through my
teeming brain. To sit still; to do nothing; to pretend I knew nothing;
an hour of it would destroy my reason--and I was invited to wait
twenty-four!

No; my word was passed; keep it I must. She knew the men, she must know
best; and her life depended on my obedience: she made that so plain.
Obey I must and would; to make a start, I tottered over the plank that
spanned the beck, and soon I saw the cottage against the moonlit sky.
I came up to it. I drew back in sudden fear. It was alight upstairs and
down, and the gaunt strong figure of the woman Braithwaite stood out
as I had seen it first, in the doorway, with the light showing warmly
through her rank red hair.

"Is that you, Mr. Cole?" she cried in a tone that she reserved for me;
yet through the forced amiability there rang a note of genuine surprise.
She had been prepared for me never to return at all!

My knees gave under me as I forced myself to advance; but my wits took
new life from the crisis, and in a flash I