eks were
flushed. He pointed across the road with shaking finger, and looked up
into Macheson's face with a triumphant chuckle.

"Run to earth at last!" he exclaimed. "You saw her! You saw her, too!"

"I saw a lady enter that house," Macheson answered. "What of it?"

The man whom he had once befriended drew a breath between his clenched
teeth.

"There she goes!" he muttered. "The woman who dared to call herself the
daughter of a poor land-agent! The woman who is deceiving her world
to-day as she deceived us--once! Bah! It is finished!"

He started to cross the road. Macheson kept by his side.

"Where are you off to?" he asked.

The man pointed to the brilliantly lit house.

"There!" he answered fiercely. "I am going to see her. To-night! At
once! She shall not escape me this time!"

"What do you want with her?" Macheson asked.

"Money--or exposure, such an exposure," the man answered. "But she will
pay. She owes a good deal; but she will pay."

"And supposing," Macheson said, "that I were to tell you that this lady
is a friend of mine, and that I will not have you intrude upon her--what
then?"

Something venomous gleamed in the man's eyes. A short unpleasant laugh
escaped him.

"Not all the devils in hell," he declared, "would keep me from going to
her. For five years she's fooled us! Not a day longer, not an hour!"

Macheson's hand rested lightly upon the man's shoulder.

"Can you reach her from prison?" he asked calmly.

The man turned and snarled at him. He knew well enough that escape or
resistance alike was hopeless. He was like a pigmy in the hands of the
man who held him.

"This isn't your affair," he pleaded earnestly. "Let me go, or I shall
do you a mischief some day. Remember it was you who helped me to escape.
You can't give me away now."

"I helped you to escape," Macheson said, "but I did not know what you
had done. There is another matter. You have to go away from here quietly
and swear never to molest----"

The man ducked with a sudden backward movement, and tried to escape, but
Macheson was on his guard.

"You are a fool," the man hissed out, his small bead-like eyes
glittering as though touched with fire, his thick red lips parted,
showing his ugly teeth. "It is money alone I want from her. I have but
to breathe her name and this address in a certain quarter of Paris, and
there are others who would take her life. Let me go!"

Then Macheson was conscious of a familiar figure cr