ays," he reported, smiling sweetly, while his yellow
forefinger moved from symbol to symbol of the picturesque writing: _'"The
blow falls to-night. Proceed at once to the gas works and do that which you
know is to be done.'"_

"At last!" The voice of the Prussian was full and vibrant with exultancy.
He threw back his head with a loud laugh, and his arm described a wild,
dramatic gesture.

"At last--der Tag! To-night the Fatherland shall be avenged!"

Shaik Tsin beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three
hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken
cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and
Adam's apple. His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered.
And the last sounds he heard, as he lay with face hideously congested and
empurpled, eyeballs starting from their deep sockets, and swollen tongue
protruding, were words spoken by Shaik Tsin as that one knelt over him, one
hand holding fast the ends of the bowstring that had cut off forever the
blessed breath of life, the other flourishing a half-sheet of notepaper.

"Fool! Look, fool, and read what vengeance visits a fool who is fool enough
to play the spy!"

He brandished the papers before those glazing eyeballs.

In an eldritch cackle he translated:

_"'He who bears this message is a Prussian dog, police trained, a spy. Let
his death be a dog's, cruel and swift.--Number One.'"_

XVIII

ORDEAL

Reviewing the day, as she undressed and prepared for bed, Sofia told
herself she had never yet lived through one so wearing, and thought the
history of its irksome hours all too legible in the lack-lustre face that
looked back from the mirror when Chou Nu uncoifed her hair and brushed its
burnished tresses.

Though she had slept late, in fact till noon and something after, her sleep
had been queerly haunted and unhappy, she could not remember how or why,
and she had awakened already ennuye, with a mind incoherently oppressed,
without relish for the promise of the day--in a mood altogether as drear as
the daylight that waited upon her unclosing eyes.

Main strength of will had not availed to dispel these vapours, neither did
their melancholy yield to the distraction provided by first acquaintance
with ways of a world unique alike in Sofia's esteem and her experience.

She who had theretofore known only in day-dreams the life of light
frivolity and fashion which found fev