upon the Russian government by the issue of forged rouble notes.

The paper fell from Myra's hands as she stood there motionless, and
apparently unmoved by the tidings she had read. Then turning slowly,
she held out her hand to Edie, who obeyed the imploring look in her
eyes, and led her from the dining room to her own chamber without a
word.

"Myra," she whispered then, and she pressed closely toward her cousin,
whose lips now parted, and she heard almost like a sigh:

"Free--free!"

"Talk to me, dear, talk to me," whispered Edie. "It frightens me when
you look like that."

Myra turned to her, caught her cousin to her breast, and kissed her
rapidly twice. Then, thrusting her away, she whispered faintly:

"Go now--go, dear. I can bear no more;" and when, a few moments later,
Edie looked back from the door she was about to close, Myra was in the
act of sinking upon her knees by the bedside, where she buried her face
in her hands.

But hardly had the door closed when she sprang to her feet, and hurried
across to shoot the bolt, and then stand with her hands to her head, and
starting eyes, picturing in imagination the scene of the past night.
The darkness and James Barron--her husband--the man who had haunted her
night and day in connection with the hour when he would come back and
claim her, not at the end of seven years, but earlier, released before
his time--that man--while she sat below in her room at the piano--yes,
she recalled vividly every minute of the previous night--she sat playing
the melodies of old ballads, favourites of her father, with Percy Guest
talking to Edie, and at that time this man was fighting to escape--this
man, her horror. And had he succeeded he would have come there.

She shuddered as, from the brief description of the struggle, she saw
him trying to descend the rocky face of the cliff, stumble when shots
were fired, and fall headlong upon the cruel stones.

It was horrible--too horrible to bear; and yet she felt obliged to dwell
upon it all, and go over it again and again, shuddering at the pictures
her active brain evoked till the agony was maddening.

Then, to make her horror culminate, doubt stepped in to ask her, as if
in an insidious whisper, whether she could believe it to be all true,
and not some reporter's error.

She felt as if she were withering beneath some cold mental blast, and in
spite of the horror, her hopes and dreams, which would have place,
shrank back a