unt you to
your grave!"

Still no sound--no gleam of steel pointing at aim through the black
aperture. Would the shot come from behind?

Tick--tick--tick--tick--

He counted the beating of his watch up to twenty. A sound stopped him
then, and he closed his eyes, and a great shiver passed through
his body.

It was the tiny bell of his watch tinkling off the hour of six!

Scarcely had that sound ceased to ring in his brain when from far
through the darkness beyond the wall of his prison there came a creaking
noise, as if a heavy door had been swung slowly on its hinges, or a trap
opened--then voices, low, quick, excited voices, the hurrying tread of
feet, a flash of light shooting through the gloom. They were coming!
After all it was not to be a private affair, and Jean was to do his
killing as the hangman's job is done in civilization--before a crowd.
Howland's arms dropped to his side. This was more terrible than the
other--this seeing and hearing of preparation, in which he fancied that
he heard the click of Croisset's gun as he lifted the hammer.

Instead it was a hand fumbling at the door. There were no voices now,
only a strange moaning sound that he could not account for. In another
moment it was made clear to him. The door swung open, and the
white-robed figure of Meleese sprang toward him with a cry that echoed
through the dungeon chambers. What happened then--the passing of white
faces beyond the doorway, the subdued murmur of voices, were all lost to
Howland in the knowledge that at the last moment they had let her come
to him, that he held her in his arms, and that she was crushing her face
to his breast and sobbing things to him which he could not understand.
Once or twice in his life he had wondered if realities might not be
dreams, and the thought came to him now when he felt the warmth of her
hands, her face, her hair, and then the passionate pressure of her lips
on his own. He lifted his eyes, and in the doorway he saw Jean Croisset,
and behind him a wild, bearded face--the face that had been over him
when life was almost choked from him on the Great North Trail. And
beyond these two he saw still others, shining ghostly and indistinct in
the deeper gloom of the outer darkness. He strained Meleese to him, and
when he looked down into her face he saw her beautiful eyes flooded with
tears, and yet shining with a great joy. Her lips trembled as she
struggled to speak. Then suddenly she broke from his a