ight sweeping down over me, and I looked up. Heavens--"

Billinger was mopping his face again, leaving streaks of char-black
where the perspiration had started.

"Pinned up there in the mass of twisted steel and broken wood was a
woman," he went on. "She was the most beautiful thing I have ever looked
upon. Her arms were reaching down to me; her face was turned a little to
one side, but still looking at me--and all but her face and part of
her arms was smothered in a mass of red-gold hair that fell down to my
shoulders. I could have sworn that she was alive. Her lips were red, and
I thought for a moment that she was going to speak to me. I could have
sworn, too, that there was color in her face, but it must have been
something in the lantern light and the red-gold of her hair, for when I
spoke, and then reached up, she was cold."

Billinger shivered and urged his horse into a faster gait.

"I went out and helped with the injured then. I guess it must have been
two hours later when I returned to take out her body. But the place
where I had seen her was empty. She was gone. At first I thought that
some of the others had carried her out, and I looked among the dead and
injured. She was not among them. I searched again when day came,
with the same result. No one has seen her. She has completely
disappeared--and with the exception of my shanty there isn't a house
within ten miles of here where she could have been taken. What do you
make of it, Steele?"

Philip had listened with tense interest.

"Perhaps you didn't return to the right place," he suggested. "Her body
may still be in the wreck."

Billinger glanced toward him with a nervous laugh.

"But it was the right place," he said. "She had evidently not gone to
bed, and was dressed. When I returned I found a part of her skirt in
the debris above. A heavy tress of her hair had caught around a steel
ribbing, and it was cut off! Some one had been there during my absence
and had taken the body. I--I'm almost ready to believe that I was
mistaken, and that she was alive. I found nothing there, nothing--that
could prove her death."

"Is it possible--" began Philip, holding out the handkerchief.

It was not necessary for him to finish. Billinger understood, and nodded
his head.

"That's what I'm thinking," he said. "Is it possible? What in God's name
would they want of her, unless--"

"Unless she was alive," added Philip. "Unless one or more of the
scoundrels search