eep and through the sightless windows shone a few silver stars.
The magnificent front of solid granite with graceful scroll-work and
carved outline, blackened here by smoke and there by age, with vines and
trees growing from crevices, stood in wondrous beauty.

The detail showed clearer than by day; the panels in high relief, of
full rigged ship, the double dolphin and the skeleton seemed too fragile
to have stood through earthquake and typhoon and the conflagrations of
war for more than two hundred years. The exquisite frieze composed of
many unconventionalized flowers extending across the front, wherein the
artist and worker had been one, was a petrified garland. This scene was
a revelation to Adams for often as he had viewed and sketched the ruin,
he had never been there by moonlight when its beauties were enhanced and
its defects hidden. He could see plainly each Chinese character upon the
carved scrolls and the words "Mater Dei" above the doorway.

Slowly the shadows crept along, making the six broken saints in their
niches seem alive; slowly the shadows upon the ruin crept along, but a
swifter shadow suddenly came forward from the steps and Adams having
forgotten, in the entrancing scene the murderer and thief who lurk in
all Macao's corners, turned as he heard a soft step, just in time to
receive in his right arm the upward blow of a dagger aimed at his side.
He lost his balance falling backward down the steps, striking his head
upon a heap of broken roof-tiles where he lay insensible. As he fell, a
woman's scream pierced the night. There was hurried tramping of sandaled
feet, as of a dozen or more coolies. The shriek was again heard and
then all was silent and the plaza empty.

IV

Sleepy Macao the day after the attempted assassination of Robert Adams
was treated to a sensation such as had not been its experience since the
memorable day in 1848 when the old Governor de Amaral lost his head at
the Porta de Cerco. Murder, attempted or accomplished, could not have
stirred them up to such an extent, for that was too common an
occurrence, but the mystery of the event was the cause. Priscilla Harvey
and her maid with one of Dom Amaral's most trusted men servants had
disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed them.

Robert Adams, since the night of the attack had not recovered his
senses, and lay in the house of Dom Amaral apparently between life and
death. The surgeons from Sam Januarius hospita