was an indescribable menace in the forger's
half-uttered threat.

"She won't be." The quality of sincerity in Dick's voice was more
convincing than any vow might have been.

"If she is, I'll get you, that's all," Garson said gravely, as one
stating a simple fact that could not be disputed.

Then he glanced down at the body of the man whom he had done to death.

"And you can tell that to Burke!" he said viciously to the dead. "You
damned squealer!" There was a supremely malevolent content in his sneer.

CHAPTER XIX. WITHIN THE TOILS.

The going of Garson left the room deathly still. Dick stared for a
moment at the space of window left uncovered by the draperies now, since
the man had hurried past them, without pausing to draw them after him.
Then, presently, the young man turned again to Mary, and took her hand
in his. The shock of the event had somehow steadied him, since it had
drawn his thoughts from that other more engrossing mood of concern over
the crisis in his own life. After all, what mattered the death of this
crook? his fancy ran. The one thing of real worth in all the world
was the life that remained to be lived between him and her.... Then,
violently, the selfishness of his mood was made plain to him. For the
hand he held was shaking like some slender-stalked lily in the clutch
of the sirocco. Even as he first perceived the fact, he saw the girl
stagger. His arm swept about her in a virile protecting embrace--just in
time, or she would have fallen.

A whisper came from her quivering lips. Her face was close to his, else
he could not have caught the uncertain murmuring. That face now was
become ghastly pale. The violet eyes were widened and dull. The muscles
of her face twitched. She rested supinely against him, as if bereft of
any strength of body or of soul. Yet, in the intensity of her utterance,
the feeble whisper struck like a shriek of horror.

"I--I--never saw any one killed before!"

The simple, grisly truth of the words--words that he might have spoken
as well--stirred the man to the deeps of his being. He shuddered, as
he turned his eyes to avoid seeing the thing that lay so very near,
mercifully merged within the shadows beyond the gentle radiance from the
single lamp. With a pang of infinite pity for the woman in his arms, he
apprehended in some degree the torture this event must have inflicted
on her. Frightful to him, it must in truth be vastly worse to her. There
was her womanly