ll scream!" she cried.

Varrick placed one hand hurriedly over her mouth, in his agony, hardly
heeding what he was doing.

"For the love of Heaven, I beg you to listen to me!" he cried. "You
must--you shall!"

She sprang backward from him, falling heavily over one of the chairs as
she did so. There was a heavy thud which awakened with a start the
sleeping butler on the floor below. With one bound he had reached the
door that opened upon the lower corridor.

"Thieves! robbers!" he ejaculated under his breath.

His first impulse was to cry aloud, but the next moment it occurred to
him that the better plan would be to break upon the midnight intruder
unawares, and assist his master in vanquishing him. The door was ajar,
and in the semi-darkness he beheld Hubert Varrick, his master,
struggling desperately with some dark, swaying figure. In that same
instant Varrick tripped upon a hassock and fell backward, striking his
head heavily against the marble mantel.

The butler lost no time. Quick as a flash he had cleared the distance
between the door-way and that other figure--which attempted to clutch at
him in turn--and raising the knife he had caught up from the table of
the room below, he buried it to the hilt in the swaying, writhing form.
The next instant it fell heavily at his feet. A moan, that sounded
wonderfully like a woman's, fell upon his horrified ear.

Varrick did not rise, though the terrified butler called upon him
vehemently. He had the presence of mind, even in that calamity, to turn
on the gas, and as a flood of light illumined the scene, he saw that it
was a _woman_ lying at his feet--ay, a woman into whose body he had
plunged that fatal knife!--while his master lay unconscious but a few
feet distant.

"Help! I am dying!" gasped the woman.

Those words recalled his scattered senses. Self-preservation is strong
within us all. As in a glass, darkly, the terrified butler, realizing
what he had done, saw arrest and prison before him, and realized that
the gallows yawned before him in the near future.

The thought came to him that there was but one thing to do, and that was
to make his escape.

Every moment was precious. His strained ear caught the sound of a
commotion on the floor above. He knew in an instant more they would find
him there with the tell-tale knife, dripping with blood, in his hand.

He flung it from him and made a dash from the room. It was not a moment
too soon, for the opposite d