eep broke from his lips. He yelled to her to draw rein;
but she only urged the horse on the faster.

He had searched the world over to find Bernardine Moore, and now that he
had come across her by chance, she should not escape him like this.

A mere chit of a girl should not outwit him in that fashion.

A mad thought occurred to him.

There was but one way of stopping that horse and overtaking Bernardine,
and that was to draw his revolver and shoot the animal dead in its
tracks.

He liked the horse; but nothing on earth should prevent him from
capturing the girl he still loved to desperation.

To think, with him, was to act; and quick as a flash, he drew a weapon
from his hip-pocket, and the loud report of a shot instantly followed.

CHAPTER LVIII.

The shot which rang out so clearly on the early morning air missed its
mark, and the noise only succeeded in sending Bernardine's horse along
the faster. Taking one terrified glance backward, Bernardine saw Jasper
Wilde's horse suddenly swerve, unseating her rider, and the next instant
he was measuring his length in the dusty road-side.

The girl did not pause to look again, nor did she draw rein upon the
panting steed, until, covered with foam, and panting for breath, he drew
up of his own accord at the gate of Gardiner mansion.

One of the grooms came running forward, and Bernardine saw that he was
greatly excited.

"The maids missed you, and feared something had happened to you, Miss
Moore," he said; "but we were all so alarmed about young master, it
caused us to forget everything else, we all love Master Jay so well."

A sharp pain, like that caused by a dagger's thrust, seemed to flash
through Bernardine's heart as those words fell upon her startled ear.

"What has happened to your master, John?" she asked, huskily; and her
voice sounded terribly unnatural.

In a voice husky with emotion the groom explained to her what was
occurring--how young Mrs. Gardiner stood guard over her husband,
refusing to allow the doctor to perform an operation which might save
their young master, who was dying by inches with each passing moment of
time--how she had caught up a thin, sharp-bladed knife which the doctor
had just taken from his surgical case, and, brandishing it before her
with the fury of a fiend incarnate, defied any one to dare approach.

Both Mrs. Gardiner and Miss Margaret had gone into hysterics, and had
to be removed from the apartment to an adjo