and stalked and hunted by some padded Hunger lurking
behind them.

In the unbroken and absolute silence which seemed to mock at his
foolish and stampeding fears, an immediate reaction of spirit set it.
He felt almost glad for this material target against which to fling his
terrors, for this precipitation of apprehension into something tangible.

He groped through his bag, hurriedly yet cautiously, for his little
sperm-oil lantern. Then he took up the revolver that lay loosely in
his coat pocket. A moment later a thin little shaft of light danced
and fingered about the inner room.

He could, at first, see nothing but the line of burnished copper
stretching across his path and flashing the light back in his eyes.
Behind this, a moment later, he made out the dark and gloomy mass of
the black safe. Then he looked deeper, with what was still again a
flutter of enigmatical fear about his heart, for that twin and
ghostlike glow which had filled him with such precipitate terror.

But there was no longer anything to be seen. He played his
interrogative finger of light up and down, and it was a full minute
before his slowly-adjusting sight penetrated to the remoter and higher
area of the surrounding walls.

It was then, and not till then, that he discovered the fact that the
wall on his right opened and receded, some five feet above the
floor-level, into a dimly-outlined alcove. As he looked closer he made
out that this alcove had, obviously, been filled by the upper portion
of a heavy iron staircase, leading to the floor above. The entire
lower half of this stairway, where once it must have obtruded into the
vault chamber, had been cut away. It was on the remaining upper
portion of this dismantled stairway that his pencil of light played
nervously and his gaze was closely riveted.

For there, above his natural line of vision, half-hidden back in the
heavy shadows, his startled eyes made out a huddled and shadowy figure.
It was a woman's figure, in black, and motionless. It was bound hand
and foot to the iron stair-stanchions.

He did not notice, in that first frenzied glance, the white band that
cut across the lower part of her face, so colorless was her skin. But
as he looked for the second time, he emitted a sudden cry, half-pity,
half-anger, for slowly and thinly it filtered into his consciousness
just what and who that watching figure was.

And then, and then only, did he speak. And when he did so he repe