reigned the most
complete silence. The horse's feet clattered over rough stones, they
turned through narrow, unfamiliar streets, so that she knew not even the
direction they took. After a time the noise grew less. The horse padded
along dirt roads, in darkness. Then the carriage stopped, and at last
the shrouded figure moved and spoke.

"I regret, Countess, that my orders are to blindfold you."

She drew herself up haughtily.

"That is not necessary, I think."

"Very necessary, madame."

She submitted ungracefully, while he bound a black cloth over her eyes.
He drew it very close and knotted it behind. In the act his--fingers
touched her face, and she felt them cold and clammy. The contact
sickened her.

"Your hand, madame."

She was led out of the carriage, and across soft earth, a devious course
again, as though they avoided small obstacles. Once her foot touched
something low and hard, like marble. Again, in the darkness, they
stumbled over a mound. She knew where she was, then--in a graveyard. But
which? There were many about the city.

An open space, the opening of a gate or door that squealed softly, a
flight of steps that led downward, and a breath of musty, cold air, damp
and cellar-like.

She was calmer now. Had they meant to kill her, there had been already a
hundred chances. It was not death, then, that awaited her--at least, not
immediate death. These precautions, too, could only mean that she was to
be freed again, and must not know where she had been.

At last, still in unbroken silence, she knew that they had entered a
large space. Their footsteps no longer echoed and re-echoed. Her guide
walked more slowly, and at last paused, releasing her hand. She felt
again the touch of his clammy fingers as he untied the knots of her
bandage. He took it off.

At first she could see little. The silence remained unbroken, and only
the center of the room was lighted. When her eyes grew accustomed, she
made out the scene slowly.

A great stone vault, its walls broken into crypts which had contained
caskets of the dead. But the caskets had been removed; and were piled in
a corner, and in the niches were rifles. In the center was a pine table,
curiously incongruous, and on it writing materials, a cheap clock, and a
pile of documents. There were two candles only, and these were stuck in
skulls--old brown skulls so infinitely removed from all semblance to the
human that they were not even horrible. It was a