to
right and left.

Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But
he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which
he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.

Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the
panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then
gave two taps more.

There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the
stack, followed by the striking of a match.

Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in
her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.

"Hello!" said he.

She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy
look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this
woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead
man, had never expected to see him again--alive.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.

Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs.
Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his
sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something
uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling
movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her
only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a
great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the
unexpected meeting had upon her.

For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than
before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and
down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her--at this helpless,
infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes--he
shivered.

"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to
Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound
her to this wicked old woman.

Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long
time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural
thing in the world:

"Where's your friend, young man?"

"W--what friend?" stammered Max.

"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No
more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf
for, eh?"

Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's
faded eyes.

"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply