lear of the trap. She
could see him; but the light intervened and blurred his view of her. He
stooped, almost as soon as he had cleared himself, to help up a fourth
man, who rose with a naked knife between his teeth. She saw then that
all were armed, and something stealthy in their bearing, something cruel
in their eyes as the light of the lanthorn fell now on one dark face and
now on another, went to her heart and chilled it. Who were they, and why
were they here? What was their purpose? As her reason awoke, as she
asked herself these questions, the fourth man stooped in his turn, and
gave his hand to a fifth. And on that she lost her self-control, and
cried out. For the last man to ascend was La Tribe--La Tribe, from whom
she had parted that morning.

The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the two
whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked. He who
held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them.
Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips.
The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her,
was Tignonville, was her lover!

"_Mon Dieu_!" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"

Then, not till then, did he know her. Until then the light of the
lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom
which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror. But
they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville
came forward.

The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather
than upon reason. The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she
asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances;
why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet
into his hands.

He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand
which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his eyes set
hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her _there_, guarding the
door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions.
But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way. With her hand raised
she pointed to the trapdoor.

"Go!" she whispered, her tone stern and low, "you have what you want!
Go!"

"No!" And he tried to pass her.

"Go!" she repeated in the same tone. "You have what you need." And
still she held her hand extended; still without falt