s without resistance. He clasped her
hands behind his neck, and she clung there mechanically as he made the
swift descent.

They reached the ground in safety, and he set her on her feet. The
terrace on which they found themselves was deserted. But as they stood
in the dark they heard the fiends in the corridor burst into the room
they had just left. And Pierre Dumaresq, lowering the ladder, laughed to
himself a low, fierce laugh, without words.

The next instant there came a rush of feet upon the balcony above them
and a torrent of angry shouting. Stephanie shrank against a pillar, but
in a moment Pierre's arm encircled her, impelling her irresistibly, and
they fled across the terrace through the darkness. The man was still
laughing as he ran. There seemed to her something devilish in his
laughter.

Down through the palace garden they sped, she gasping and stumbling in
nightmare flight, he strongly upholding her, till half a dozen revolver
shots pierced the infuriated uproar behind them and something that
burned with a red-hot agony struck her left hand. She cried out
involuntarily, and Pierre ceased his headlong rush for safety.

"You are hit?" he questioned. "Where?"

But she could not answer him, could not so much as stand. His voice
seemed to come from an immense distance. She hardly heard his words. She
was sinking, sinking into a void unfathomable.

He did not stay to question further. Abruptly he stooped, gathered her
up, slung her across his shoulder, and ran on.

V

When Stephanie opened her eyes again the sound of the sea was in her
ears, and she felt as if she must have heard it for some time. She was
lying in a chair amid surroundings wholly strange to her, and some
one--a man whose face she could not see--was beside her, bending over a
table, evidently engaged upon something that occupied his most minute
attention. She watched him dreamily for a little, till the immense
breadth of his shoulders struck a quick-growing fear into her heart;
then she made a sudden effort to raise herself.

Instantly she was stabbed by a dart of pain so acute that she barely
repressed a cry.

"Keep still, mademoiselle!" It was Pierre's voice; he spoke without
turning. "I shall not hurt you more than I can help."

She sank back again, shuddering uncontrollably. She knew now what he was
doing. It had flashed upon her in that moment of horrible suffering. He
was probing for a bullet in her left hand. Dumbly sh