nd of the hall. The door was
closed with the exception of an inch or two.

"Marion!" he called softly, and listened intently.

He went on when there was no reply, and pushed open the door.

A candle was burning on a stand in front of a mirror. The room was as
empty as the others. But there was no disorder here. The bed was unused,
the garments in the open closet had not been disarranged. On the floor
beside the bed was a pair of shoes and as Nathaniel saw them his heart
seemed to leap to his throat and stifled the cry that was on his lips.
He took one of them in his hand, his whole being throbbing with
excitement. It was Marion's shoe--encrusted with mud and torn as he had
seen it in the forest. With her name falling from his lips in a pleading
cry he now searched the room and on the stand in front of the mirror he
found a lilac colored ribbon, soiled and crumpled. It was Marion's
ribbon--the one he had seen last in her hair, and he crushed it to his
lips as he ran back into the great room, calling out her name again and
again in the torture of helplessness that now possessed him.

Mechanically, rather than with reason, he went to the fifth and last
door. His candle had become extinguished in his haste and after he had
opened the door he stopped at the threshold of the black hall to light
it again. There was a moment's pause as he searched his pockets for a
match, a silence in which he listened as he searched, and suddenly as he
was about to strike the sulphur tipped splint there came to his ears a
sound that held him chained to the spot. It was the sobbing of a woman;
or was it a child? In a moment he knew that it was a woman; and then the
sobbing ceased.

There was nothing but darkness ahead of him; no ray of light shone under
the door; the chamber itself was in utter gloom. As quietly as possible
he relighted his candle. A glance assured him that this hall was
different from the others; it was deeper, and there were two doors at
the end of it instead of one. Through which of these doors had come the
sound of sobbing he had heard?

He approached and listened. Each moment added to his excitement, his
fears, his hopes, but at last he opened the door on the left. The room
was empty; there was the same disorder as before; the same signs of
hurried flight. It was the room on the right! His heart almost stopped
its beating as he placed his hand on the latch, lifted it, and pushed
the door in. Kneeling beside the bed h