rmous, one eye fixed sternly on the window.

The soft steps paused: perhaps she had imagined them! Perhaps, if
they kept quite still, that quaking pair, perhaps.... The man
breathed like a drowning swimmer; it seemed to Caroline she must
scream.

The door flew open.

"Look out, there--it's loaded!" the voice came sharp as a
cracked whip.

Caroline gave a shriek of joy.

"Why, it's Lindsay!" she cried, "it's just Cousin Lindsay!"

A tall, powerful young man came in behind a leveled revolver.

"Car--what--be still, there!" he gasped, steadying the weapon. The
man stood motionless, his eyes on the ground.

"It's all right--I never carried a gun in my life," he said quietly.

"Oh, Lindsay, it's only a joke!"

Caroline ran towards him, stopping in horror at the ugly winking
eyes of the revolver.

"Mr. Barker only meant--tell Lin about it!" she entreated, sick with
foreboding at the dogged man before her, the scornful flushed boy at
her side.

"I guess you better tell him, Missy," said the man in a low empty
voice.

"Go home, Caroline; go straight home this moment."

Caroline had never heard her cousin speak in that tone, and it was
partly in tears, partly in wrath that she answered,

"I will _not_ go straight home, Lindsay Holt, and you needn't talk
to me that way, either! Uncle Joe himself asked Mr. Barker--"

She began glibly enough, but even to her simple consciousness the
story wavered and rang false, with this stricken, passive man before
her. Her voice faltered, she choked.... Had Uncle Joe really asked
this man to get the emeralds? Was it possible that--Lindsay laughed
disagreeably.

"If you've quite finished, Caroline, will you go home?" he demanded,
his eyes still on the revolver.

She gulped painfully; her faith tottered on the last brink.

"Oh, let it go at that; can't you?" the man broke in roughly. "What
difference does it make to you, eh, how this part of the job gets
done? Have I made you any trouble yet? My goose is cooked, all
right, and we'll--we'll talk that over, later, when Missy goes,
but--but couldn't you"--he looked almost appealingly at the young
fellow,--"couldn't we--it's all there in the suit-case--"

"It was going under my bed Lin--I'd have been careful," Caroline was
hoping against hope, now.

"You see, Missy," said the man quickly, in almost his old manner,
"you see how it turns out. It was a bad plan, I guess--you can see
how your cousin takes it. You'll have to--t