th if I could but secure her release!

A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.

Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
insanity.

"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
calm attitude of the religious.

"You will not act with rashness?" she implored in quick apprehension.
"Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own."

"Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!" I answered, looking
straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
a spell. "They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector."

"How?"

"The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
me."

"But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!" cried the old woman in a hoarse
voice. "If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
night and day they would shoot you both."

"I will risk it," I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
bed.

Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
accompany me.

The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.

"Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
not dare to accept such responsibility."

"Come," I said to Elma, althou