to hold his feet and soon ascended through a large gap under
the eaves of the store. Some shock had thrown out a piece of brickwork
here. Seen from the ground the aperture looked trifling and had indeed
challenged no attention; but it was large enough to admit a man.

For a moment Estelle stood in this aperture before entering the den
within. She raised her voice, which fluttered after her climb, and
called to him.

"Abel! Abel! It's Estelle."

There came the thought, even as she spoke, that he might answer with a
bullet; but he answered not at all. She felt thankful for the silence
and hoped that he might have deserted his retreat. Perhaps, indeed, he
had never come to it; and yet it seemed impossible that he had for two
days escaped capture unless here concealed. It occurred to her that he
might wander out by night and return before day. He might even now be
behind her, to intercept her return. Still no shadow of fear shook her
mind or body. She felt not a tremor. All that concerned her conscience
was now completed and she hoped that it would be possible to dismiss
from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life
and worked evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his destiny
and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal
search. Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him
to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would
never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep his secret.

But the chamber under the roof was large and she did not leave it
without making sure that he was neither hiding nor sleeping within it.
She entered, lighted her candle and examined a triangular recess formed
by the converging beams of the roof above her and the joists under her
feet.

The boy had been busy here. There were evidences of him--evidences of a
child rather than a man. Boyish forethought stared her in the face and
staggered her by its ghastly incongruities with the things this
premeditating youth had done. Here were provisions, not such as a man
would have selected to stand a siege, but the taste of a schoolboy. She
looked at the supplies spread here--tins of preserved food, packets of
chocolate, bottles of ginger beer, bananas, biscuits. But it seemed that
the hoard had not been touched. One tin of potted salmon had been
opened, but no part of the contents was consumed. Either accident had
changed his purpose and frightened