finished a few lines--enough to
see that it was very different from the first--when she felt a clutch of
hands around her throat and realized that Fauvette had crept up
cunningly from behind. There had been a struggle in which the medium
tried vainly to cry out for help or to reach the bell, but her enemy was
too strong for her, and she had grown weaker; then, using strategy, she
let herself fall limp under the murderous hands, whereupon Fauvette,
laughing triumphantly, had loosened her grip for a moment and allowed
Seraphine to free herself.

"Then I caught her and held her so that I could look into her eyes and,
finally, I subdued her. She cried out that she would come back again,
but I forced her to lie down and almost instantly she fell into a deep
sleep."

"It was your love and your fearlessness that gave you the victory,"
Leroy said quietly. Then he took up the other message and read it with
darkening eyes.

"Horrible! The change must have come while she was writing this."

He opened the bedroom door softly and, with infinite compassion in his
rugged face, bent over Penelope who was sleeping peacefully, her
loveliness marred by no sign of evil.

An hour passed now, during which the spiritual physician gave Seraphine
her instructions for the night and made preparations for the struggle
that he knew was before him.

* * * * *

Meantime Captain Herrick had reached the sanitarium and, finding Dr.
Owen in the study, had laid before him a plan to save Penelope, if it
was true, as Christopher believed, that her trouble was simply in the
imagination. He proposed to divert his sweetheart's attention so that
she would not know when the deadly Fauvette hour was at hand. And to
this end he had arranged to have the clocks set back half an hour.

"It can't do any harm, can it, sir?" he urged with a lover's ardor, "and
it may succeed. Dr. Leroy says it's fear that's killing her. Well, we'll
drive away her fear. I've fixed it at the church down the street, the
one that chimes the quarter-hours, to have that clock put back. And the
clocks in the house are easy. What do you think of it, sir?" he asked
eagerly.

The old doctor frowned in perplexity.

"I don't know, Chris. You'll have to put this up to Dr. Leroy. He's a
wonderful fellow. I've had my eyes opened tonight or my
soul--something."

The two men smoked solemnly.

"I believe we're going to save Penelope, my boy--somehow. It's a