ew it from the wound and crouched
among the shadows watching him with wide-dilated eyes.

The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his writhing body fairly
leaped into the air, bounded on the couch and stood erect. He staggered
backward and lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low, gripping
the knife and waiting for her chance to strike the last blow.

Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw the old woman
creeping nearer through the gray light of the dawn.

He threw his hands above his head and tried to shout his warning. She
was on him, her trembling hand feeling for his throat, before he could
speak.

Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her fingers away, he
gasped:

"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"

"I just want yer money," she whispered. "That's all, and I'm a-goin' ter
have it!"

Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his neck.

She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall across the couch. His
body writhed a moment in agony and was still.

Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the bag and thrust her
itching fingers into the gold, gripping it fiercely.

"Nobody's goin' to ask ye how ye got it--they just want to know HAVE ye
got it--yeah! Yeah----"

The last word died on her lips. The door of the shed-room suddenly
opened and Mary stood before her.

CHAPTER XXII. DELIVERANCE

The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room Mary's stupefied
senses had confused with a nightmare which she had been painfully
fighting.

The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a crack into her face
once. It was the flame of a revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim's
den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and
she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council,
cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes
and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.

With an oath he had slapped her.

"Get out, you damned little fool!" he growled. "You're always in the way
when you're not wanted. Nobody can ever find you when there's work to be
done----"

"But I can't see, Jim dear," she pleaded. "I do not know when things are
out of place----"

"You're a liar!" he roared. "You know where every piece of junk stands
in this room better than I do. I can't bring a friend into that door
that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on th