gh and Billy's
heart warmed to him. Then, for the first time, he felt something
numb and queer about his left arm and putting his hand on it he
found the sopping sleeve was torn and a warm ooze of blood welling
through the cold water from the canal.

"Gosh, the chap winged me!" was his startled exclamation. "Feels as
if it's going to sleep--glad it didn't go back on me in the ditch,
there." Then he pressed back into the shadows for he saw a figure
edging forward beyond the corner of a tomb. After a moment's
hesitation it came directly toward him. He saw it was Robert
Falconer.

Foreboding gripped him and he could scarcely keep himself from
shouting his eager question, but he hurried forward till the two
stood face to face and then, "Where is she? Did you get her?" burst
from him, and "Have you got her? Is she all right?" came at the same
instant from Falconer.

Blankly they stared at each other and a cold sense of failure went
over and over Billy like a sea. His voice shook with this new,
sickening fear. "Didn't you see her at all?"

"Did you?" counter-demanded Falconer, and Billy stammered, "Why no
I--I found the room empty. And I thought you were safely off with
her."

"Safely off!" said Falconer grimly. "I got in all right, though
there must be a new lock on the door of that room up top, but I made
some noise about it and ran plump into a fellow half way down the
stairs. I threw him the rest of the way down, and he fired and
brought a couple of others swarming up at me but I got out on the
roofs again and gave them the slip. They went tearing back along the
wing toward the garden the way I'd come and I went toward the street
and got down."

"Got down! _How_ did you get down?"

"Over those bay-window places," said the Englishman briefly. "I tied
that cord I had to one of the doddering old cornices to start with.
It wasn't any trick at all."

"Three stories," Billy shot in.

"And you'd no better luck, it seems?" Falconer inquired.

"No, I came up from below and found the room empty--but disheveled,
so I thought you were off with her sure. And just then the Captain
came in the panel places--just back from chasing you along the roof,
I guess, for I'd been hearing the racket--and another fellow with
him and we had a scrimmage and I got away through the men's wing."

"You're wet."

"That was a bit of canal bathing--our Arab put off with the canoe
when I was needing it badly. I left him waiting here all ri