"I 'll be on guard," he answered.

The lower floor was one big room and showed no sign of having been
occupied for years. It was scantily furnished and smelled damp and
musty. At one side a big stone fireplace looked as dead as a tomb. He
pushed through a door into the kitchen which led off this. The
cast-iron stove was rusted and the covers cracked. He glanced into it.
It was free of ashes and the wood-box was empty.

He came back and slowly mounted the stairs leading to the next floor.
Stopping at the top, he listened. There was no sound. He entered the
sleeping rooms one after another. The beds were stripped of blankets
and the striped canvas of the mattresses was dusty and forbidding.
There were six of these rooms but the farther one alone was habitable.
Here a few blankets covered the bed and in the small fireplace there
were ashes. They were cold, but he detected several bits of charred
paper which were dry and crisp. Some old clothes were scattered about
the floor and several minor articles which he scarcely noticed. He
listened again. There was not a sound, and yet he had a feeling, born
of what he did not know, that he was not alone here. The effect was to
startle him. If he had been just a passing stranger looking for a
place to lodge for the night it would have been sufficient to drive him
outdoors again.

He came out into the hall which divided the rooms, and there saw a
ladder which led into an unlighted attic. He paused. He heard her
calling to him, but he did not answer. He would soon be down again.

He mounted the ladder quickly, and peered into the dark of the
unlighted recess. He could make out nothing, and so clambered over a
beam to the unfinished floor to wait until his eyes had become more
accustomed to the shadows. His feet had scarcely touched a firm
foundation before he was conscious of a slight noise behind him. He
turned, and at the same moment a form hurled itself upon him. In the
frenzied movement of the hands for his throat, in the spasmodic clutch
of the arms which clung animal-like about him he recognized the same
mad, unreasoning passion with which young Arsdale had before attacked
him. He could not see his face, and the man uttered no cry. The
fellow's arms seemed stronger than before and even longer. But he
himself was stronger also, and so while the madman from behind clasped
his hands below Donaldson's throat, the latter managed to get his own
arms behin