ie Bain had reached his side and torn it from his
grasp, just as the flames had caught at it.

"What would you do?" she screamed.

He looked at her with cunning eyes.

"How came you by this?" he cried, in an awful voice, as he struggled
with her desperately to gain the paper.

No word answered him.

"You shall not have it!" he cried, wrenching it from her by main force.
"You shall not show this up to the world until it is too late to affect
Hubert Varrick."

A cry of agony burst from Jessie's death-white lips. She saw, in her
terror, that the old butler had lost his reason, and yet withal he was
so cunning.

She pleaded with him on her knees, but it was useless. He muttered over
and over again that she should not have the paper, that he would keep
her there a prisoner until all was over.

Despite her entreaties, to her great horror the man kept his word, and
Jessie found herself a prisoner in the isolated place. She was too weak
to make any effort to escape; there was none to hear her faint cries.

It must be said for the man that he tended her as faithfully as a woman
might have done; but he was deaf to her pitiful and desperate appeal. He
taunted her from day to day with the knowledge that it wanted but one
day more to Hubert Varrick's trial. At last the terrible time dawned. It
seemed to Jessie that she would go mad with the horror of it.

She tried with all her weak strength to break the firm old locks that
held her a prisoner there, but it was useless, useless. The sun slowly
climbed the heavens, and she knew, oh God! she knew what was to happen
to Hubert Varrick within those hours.

She sunk on her knees, crying out that if she could not aid the man she
loved, that the same sun would set upon her lifeless form--she would
kill herself.

Hardly had this resolve become a fixed purpose with her, ere she became
conscious of a loud knock at the door.

"I-- I am a prisoner here!" she cried. "I beg you, whoever you are,
break the lock of the door!"

This was hastily complied with, and she saw standing before her two
officers of the law.

"Oh, sir!" she gasped, "take me to Hubert Varrick at once, or it will be
too late to save him!"

"We are here for that very purpose," answered one of them. "We know all.
The late butler of the Varrick mansion has just breathed his last, and
confessed all--that it was he who committed the murder, and just how it
happened, begging us to come after you, and to liberate y