examination of the news-sheet.

"All right. Come along, Marty," she agreed, with assumed carelessness.

The boy was very moody. He stole glances at her only when he thought
she was not looking. Never had Janice seen the hobbledehoy act so
strangely!

They plowed through the increasing snow up Hillside Avenue, and the
snow fell so rapidly that the girl was really glad she had come home.
She entered first, Marty staying out on the porch a long time, stamping
and scraping his boots.

When he came in he still had nothing to say. He pulled his seat to the
far side of the glowing stove and sat there, hands in his pockets and
chin on his breast.

"What's the matter with you, Marty?" shrilled Mrs. Day. "You ain't
sick, be ye?"

"Nop," growled her son.

That was about all they could get out of him--monosyllables--until
Janice retired to her own room. The girl was so anxious to get
upstairs and look at that paper she had recovered from the reading-room
fire, that she went early. When she had bidden the others good night
and mounted to her room, however, she did something she had never done
before. She unlatched her door again softly and tiptoed out to the
landing at the top of the stairs, to listen.

Marty had suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense,
dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word
he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body,
Marty! It ain't so--don't say it's so!"

"Be still, 'Mira," commanded Uncle Jason's quaking voice. "Let the boy
tell it."

She heard nothing more but the murmur of her cousin's voice and her
aunt's soft crying. Janice stole back into her cold room. She shook
terribly, but not with the chill of the frosty air.

Her trembling fingers found a match and ignited the wick of the
skeleton lamp. She had, ere this, manufactured a pretty paper shade
for it, and this threw the stronger radiance of the light upon a round
spot on the bureau. She drew out the scorched paper and unfolded it in
that light.

She did not have to search long. The article she feared to see was
upon the first page of the paper. The black headlines were so plain
that she scanned them at a single glance:

THE BANDIT, RAPHELE, AT WORK

A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week
Execution in Granadas District

TWO AMERICANS DRAW LOTS FOR LIFE

John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His
Fellow-Prisoner, Broxton Day,