ing him. "There's some one here, and I know it. I'm not such
a fool as to believe--Say! What's that? The ceiling! By the eternal,
that scraping noise explains it! There's where the secret trap-door
is--in the ceiling! Within arm's reach, at that! Watch me, old woman!
I'll have your spry friend out of his nest in the shake of a lamb's
tail."

The hag was standing in the kitchen door now, still grinning evilly. She
watched the eager young man pound upon the low ceiling with a
three-legged stool that he had seized from the floor.

"I don't see how he got up there so quickly, though. He must be like
greased lightning."

He was pounding vigorously on the roughly boarded ceiling when the
sharp voice of the old woman, raised in command, caused him to lower the
stool and turn upon her with gleaming, triumphant eyes. The look he saw
in her face was sufficient to check his enterprise for the moment. He
dropped the stool and started toward her, his arms extended to catch her
swaying form. The look of the dying was in her eyes; she seemed to be
crumpling before him.

He reached her in time, his strong arms grasping the frail, bent figure
as it sank to the floor. As he lifted her bodily from her feet, intent
upon carrying her to the open air, her bony fingers sank into his arm
with the grip of death, and--could he believe his ears!--a low, mocking
laugh came from her lips.

Down where the pebbly house-yard merged into the mossy banks, Mr. Hobbs
sat tight, still staring with gloomy eyes at the dark little hut up the
glen. His sturdy knees were pressing the skirts of the saddle with a
firmness that left no room for doubt as to the tension his nerves were
under. Now and then he murmured "My word!" but in what connection it is
doubtful if even he could tell. A quarter of an hour had passed since
King disappeared through the doorway: Mr. Hobbs was getting nervous.

The shiftless, lanky goose-herd came forth in time, and lazily drove his
scattered flock off into the lower glen.

The horses were becoming impatient. To his extreme discomfort, not to
say apprehension, they were constantly pricking their ears forward and
snorting in the direction of the hovel; a very puzzling circumstance,
thought Mr. Hobbs. At this point he began to say "dammit," and with some
sense of appreciation, too.

Presently his eye caught sight of a thin stream of smoke, rather black
than blue, arising from the little chimney at the rear of the cabin.
His e