se of Frederick Cavendish. Her eyes brightened, and a flush of
colour crept into her cheeks. She believed in him, in his courage--he
had appealed to her as a man.

Suddenly she seemed to realise the yearning of her own heart, her utter
faith in him. He would come, he must come; even now he might have
discovered her sudden disappearance, and suspected the cause. He would
never believe any lies they might tell--that she had departed without a
word, without a message--he would find out the truth somehow; he was
not the kind to lie down, to avoid danger when it confronted duty--and,
besides, he cared. She knew this, comprehended without question; there
had been no word spoken, yet she knew.

Once she had accepted this knowledge with a smile, but now it thrilled
her with hope, and set her heart throbbing strangely. Not that she
dreamed love in return, or permitted it to even enter her mind; yet the
very thought that this man would, if necessary, wade into the very
waters of death for her sake, was somehow sweet and consoling. She was
no longer alone; no longer hopeless and unnerved--deep down in her
consciousness she trusted him.

"If"--how often that recurred; how it brought back memory of Lacy, of
Enright, of Beaton, of the La Rue woman. What else could they have
remained behind for, except to hide and close the trail? It was
Westcott they would guard against; he was the only one they now had any
cause to fear. They suspected his connection with her, his knowledge
of their purpose; they knew of his presence the night before at the
shaft-house of Lacy's mine; they would "get" him, if they could, and by
no such simple methods as they got her. If she could only have warned
him; if he was only placed on guard before they were ready to
act--"if"----

Suddenly the girl's slender body grew taut, and her thin white,
delicate hands clutched the granite wall back of her, and into her grey
eyes crept the light of terror, a terror that was new and strange to
her, a nameless clutching fear that her varied experiences in the city
had never brought her, an insidious, terrible fright for her bodily
safety. Her delicate ears, strained under their spun-brown covering of
hair--there was no doubt of it; she heard footsteps in the passageway.
Juan Cateras with his leering, lustful smile was coming back.

CHAPTER XXV: IN THE DARK PASSAGE

The uncertainty was of scarcely an instant. The open slit above the
door was a pe