The Storyteller.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

THE LIGHTED WINDOW.

JOHN STKODE'S QUEER CHRISTMAS EVE. (■By Sidney Warwick), He rfas at the end of his strength, at the end of his courage, when he caught • til* first glimmer of that lighted window. At first it was little more than a 1 faintly luminous patch of orange growing mysteriously out of the fog ahead of him; but A3 the stumbling figure with the white, hunted face dragged his weary footsteps nearer it proved to be—- , what ho had hardly dared to hope, after wandering, as it seemed, endlessly in those desolate wastes without sight or sign of a human habitation—the light from a house. . Froth somewhere behind the house—a mere blur of darker formless shadow in the mist, save for the one lighted window watching him like a red eye—came suddenly the long-drawn, melancholy whine of a dog. Yet, desperate as John Strode's plight was, it needed an effort of courage to lift the latch of the garden gate that he stumbled against almost before he ni. aware of it. At best it was a choice of two evils' —to present himself at this house in those ugly, tell-tale gar- . meats marked with the broad arrow; it wu only the extremity of his need that drove him. What reception was he likely to meet with, this man whose very appearance proclaimed him an escaped convict t All day long the drifting mist had hong over the great moors; all day long this man' who had broken prison had been stumbling blindly forward over the rough, uneven ground, now running with aching limbs and panting breath, with the ghostly, baffling mist in his eyes, now crouching for an enforced rest in some ditch, chilled to the bone, with his teeth chattering in his voiceless misery, when too tired to respond even to the driving goad of fear. The ground underfoot was hard with frost. The biting grip of winter had fastened on the bleak Dartmoor uplands, and a light fall of snow had ushered in the Eve of Christmas—at least, it had been the morning of Christmas Eve when lie and two or three fellow-convicts had snatched at an, opportunity of making a dash for liberty from the great grim prison at Princetown. Had it been only that morning, or had it been days ago, that he had broken free, had heard the crack of rifles r i|))e warning sound of the alarm bell Tindrag furiously out after the fugitives, deadened by the wall of mist? It seemed to this man almoßt as though he had been running and doubling for a dozen days rather than merely as many hours. He had long since lost sight of his companions; it was a case of each for himself in that mad dash from their house of bondage. Christmas Eve! And only three Christmases ago - He set his teeth and tried to shut out froiA -his mind the -memory that brought, weak, womanish tears to his eyes, the thought of the last Christmas lie had spent in'his old home. Physical exhaustion and hunger had already Vgun to play strange tricks with his nerves before he caught sigbt of that lighted window. Again and again, as he glanced back over his shoulder, he found himself almost fancying that he saw faces starting out of the white mist, saw the ring of levelled rifles closing about him, could hear the summons of challenging voices—fancies that might yet materialise into grim reality if he knocked at this unknown door that had loomed up unexpectedly out of the night.

Yet knock he must. It was the last bare chance to be snatched at out of the despair closing about his mind. Faint as be -was from want of food, want of rest, lie had no alternative—except to wander in this fog-bound, baffling wilderness until he dropped, to perish of cold and exposure.

, The click of the gate sounded curiously load in the deadened atmosphere. It was evidently heard by someone in the cottage, for, as he came nearer, Strode ralised that this lonely was little more than that; he saw a figure suddenly pass between the light and the window, casting a shadow on the blind —a woman's shadow. And again from the back of the house came the prolonged melancholy howl of a dog, stirring a queer, uncanny thrill in the man, his nervei strung to abnormal tension. The blind of the window was drawn aside; he caught a glimpse of a girl's face outlined against the lighted room, peering out into the mist. In other circumstances John Stroude would have been struck by the strange, unusual beanty of the face, its whiteness heightened by the heavy jet-black hair; what he nj>ticed most in that first moment—a moment that was to live vividly in his mind for years after —was the look of haunting terror in the eyes that fell on him. AVas it his unexpected app?arance that had startled her so? Yet 1 that first glimpse could not have told her that he was an escaped convict. He ran up to the win.lo.v on a desperate impulse. "Don't be afraid!" the hunted sobbing

fugitive cried to her through the closed

panes. "Will you open the window ? I v want to speak to you. Don't refuse; 9 you have nothing to fear from me." He reeled unsteadily from sheer overmastering weakness as he spoke. For a moment the girl hesitated, looking at him with startled eyes. Then, as if reluctantly, she opened the window. "Who are you! What do you want!" There was an undertone of fear in her voice; it was a voice of liquid cadences, such as should oelong to a woman of her beauty. But it seemed to Strode, in some unesplainable way, that he stood outside those emotions of fear that face and voice alike revealed —that before he had seen the light from this lonely house on the moors Fear had stalked within Jts walls almost like a tangible presence. - "Who am I? But don't my clothes tell you that?" with a gesture towards the garb of servitude he wore, plainly revealed in the light issuing from the firelit room. "Haven't you heard the bell from the prison crying out its alarm? I'm an escaped prisoner—don't shrink from me—they're hunting me like a dog. Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't refuse m< your pity and help!" His eyes were wild with appeal. The clothes revealed to her the haggard, beseeching fact—that of a man of not more than flfe-and-twenty—it was drawn now in its pitiful intensity, lined and weary; but it was a iace that ordinarily would haw been fir from unattractive; and the fugitive's voice had a certain quality in it that rang through its weakness and distresa

"I've been hiding from them all day, running blindfold in this fog, and, for all I know, I may have run in a circle, back almost to the doors of the prison again, or ithey may be close upon my heels now, to shoot me down like a mad dog rather than let me give them the slip a, second time. Will you help me? I throw myself on your compassion—you won't refuse to help me!" A little sob broke his voice. It wa3 his only chance. Would she keep her door shut on his last hope? She looked at him irresolutely, still with that curious preoccupied dread in the colourless face —some dread that her eyes seemed to be looking back into even as she spoke—not without a touch of pity. ''But I can do nothing. I —l am sorry; but I cannot shelter you. It's not rthat I don't pity you, whatever you have been or done, only I cannot give you shelter." The light was full on his face. Her words seemed to come to him like a blow. She saw the look of hopeless despair, and she added quickly, "Stay! At least I can give you food, though I can do no more." "Don't refuse!" he broke out, desperately. "I—l'm dead beat. If you send me away I shall probably be found dead by morning. It's rest I want, rest and warmth, almost more than food. The cold has got to my bones. And I'm tired out." He turned with a start and listened for a moment. Nothing. A trick of his frayed nerves again. Only for an instant he had been sure he heard stealthy footsteps moving in the shadows, creeping up behind him. Again the dog that he had heard before gave its uneasy, mournful howl. Strode saw the whitefaced girl give a little irrepressible shudder at the soijnd. "Even if you're alone in the house you have nothing to fear from me "

"I am not alone, and I am not afraid of you. Only "

She did not finish the sentence. "Won't you give me shelter for an hour? I'll go on the stroke of the hour," he pleaded. "An hour's rest would mean everything. I am trying to get to Listleigh—perhaps I am nowhere near it?"

"It is from two to three miles away." Listleigh was a village on the fringe of the moors. 9

"But if it were only half that distance I couldn't walk there without food and rest," broke out Strode. "Won't you give me that? You look too tender and pitiful, and you look, too, as if you bad suffered yourself"—he saw her hands clasp and unclasp convulsively—"you wouldn't turn a homeless dog from your door on such a night, much less without your pity from a human beingeven a convict! When I first saw your face I felt I could beg this of you—that you would not betray a poor hunted I beg your pardon," he broke off, quickly, "but in that place I've come from one forgets even how to speak like a decent human being, herded with the vilest of the vile! I'll tell you why I must get to Listleigh. My mother's there; after my conviction she took a house on the moors to be near her son, to catch a glimpse of him sometimes working on Dartmoor. And now she's dying. It was to see her before she died that I snaitched the chance of escape this morning. I believe my conviction was her death sentence—she's never been the same since. And now they tell me she's dying—oh, I'm not lying to you! After seeing her—well, they can do what they like with me then!" A little sob caught his breath. He stretched out two imploring arms to her at the window.

"It rests with you if this dying woman is to see her srfn again—it rests with you! If you turn me away, it means either recapture—for all I know they may be close on my heels now—or that I shall' drop of fatigue to die out on these moors."

"Why did they send you to moor ?" the girl said, her voice still irresolute, not answering his appeal. "For taking the law into my own hands on a scoundrel whom the law would not have touched," and a fierce, smouldering passion crept along the spoken words like a spark along a laid train. "I was put in prison for what they called attempted murder." "Murder!"

The little shuddering cry broke from the |irl; her face had gone whiter still. "But it wasn't murder—don't shrink back from me—it was only justice!" the man cried, passionately. "Maybe I was a fool to blurt it out, when, perhaps, I might have appealed to your pity by posing as a wronged, innocent man. But I wanted to be honest with you. The man didn't die—l didn't even mean he should, though he deserved death a dozen times. Shall I tell you what he did? A man who tricked a woman into a sham marriage, who deserted her, to die of a broken heart —my sister I They gave me five years—there's no 'unwritten law' recognised in England—bat if they'd given me double I should still have felt no regret for what they did. I'd left my mark for life 011 that hunter of women. And what I did shouldn't repel you—it should be an added claim on a woman's compassion!" he cried.

He was sure of the pity in the beautiful face now—it seemed more than beautiful in the compassion he read there. John Strode knew that it was a face he would never forget, even if after to-night he never saw it again. Bit she shook her head. "I am sorry. Oh, I wish I could have helped you " In the middle of the words the girl turned with a start, and the man without the window saw another figure behind her in the room—a tall, rather hard-featured, older woman, who came forward, glancing out at him. "But why should we not help this mail?" For an instant she seemed to glance meaningly a't the girl, who, as Strode noticed, drew back a little as if afraid. "On such a night we cannot refuse hospitality even to a fugitive criminal." Kvidently the new-comer had been in the room longer than the girl had supposed; must have overheard the greater part of what had passed. "Leave this to me; you had better go to your room," she added sharply to the other, who shrank back before the older woman's peremptory authoritativeness white and without a word. "I'll open the door," she added to the man outside.

He heard the har6h grating of the key in the lock as he made his way towards the threshold; the door was opened, revealing the small, square, stone-flagged hall of what was evidently an oldfashioned roomy cottage. Strode stumbled inside, as the woman held open the door, almost like a drunken man, worn out with fatigue, feeling that for his life he could not have kept going for another dozen yards.

The warmth that met him on 'the threshold seemed suddenly to make him oppressively drowsy—almost too drowsy even to feel wonder why, in spite of her offer of hospitality, the woman's voice should remain so hard and unsympathetic. Her willingness to give him shelter, coupled with the total lack of pity expressed in face or voice, seemed to contrast strangely with the girl's attitude. He tried to put his gratitude imto words, but tlie words would not come. The woman closed the door and locked it.

"This house stands quite alone on the moors," she explained, briefly. "We always keep the door locked after nightfall. Come this way." ; He was following her mochanically across the hall, when something met his half-closed eyes to startle him to sudden wakefulness—something that in a moment seemed to life the numbing drowsiness closing round his mind. At intervals on the carpeted stone floor little dark spots had dripped, forming a kind of faint trail leading to the open door of what was evidently a kitchen at ithe end of a passage. Strode's stratled eyes followed the trail in the lamplight to where it ended out of sight behind the cheap, flowered Japanese screen.

Perhaps it was his overwrought nerves; but in a moment John Strode found himself caught in a sudden current of fear in full flood. What did that curious trail to the screen signify? What lay behind the screen? He stood staring at it, unaccountably conscious of a swift shrinking, of something indefinably disquieting in the lonely house where he had first been refused shelter and now had been accorded it so readily, of something suddenly sinister in the atmosphere. From it he looked up to meet the white-faced girl's fascinated eye? bent on him. The other woman's voice broke the tension of that silence.

"The dog has been fighting and came in here with his ear bleeding, so I had to turn him out into the yard. No doubt you heard his howling?" she said, in her. cold, measured voice. "Come in here."

She had led the way to the room at the window of which he had spoken to the girl.

But on the threshold, with that vague clutching of Fear's fingers at his nerves, something almost like a premonition made him hesitate and say—something it would not have occurred to him to say to the girl—as he searched her face: — "You won't betray me?" The woman's mouth went harder.

"There is the door if you would prefer to be outside again," she said. "You have your choice."

He muttered an apology. He was a fool to give way to his nervous fancies. He had no choice, of course. He went into the room.

"I'll bring you food." The woman did not shut the door as she went out of the room; his eyes followed her. He saw the girl run hp to her quickly with that white, tragic face, laying a hand on the other's arm as she whispered something. The older woman shook off 'the hand with some impatient whispered retort. Presently she returned to Strode with a tray of food and drink; stood in the room whilst he ate. As he ate he wondered why was the girl so evidently afraid of her companion? But he was too (tired to follow the profitless speculation. Before he had eaten a dozen mouthfuls his head was so heavy that he was half dozing, as the warmth of the fire stole gratefully about his numbed limbs. "I'll leave you now to rest awhile," his hostess said, in the same cold, unsympathetic voice. ( As she reached the door she turned to glance back at him. Already the man had fallen into a heavy slumber in the chair. She went out, softly closing the door.

How long he had slept Strode did riot know, or what it was that suddenly awakened him. He started out of his sleep, assailed by an army of vague terrors, in a moment alert and wide awake, listening intently. At first he could heßr nothing. The heavy silence of the room seemed vibrant with whispers; then from a distant room his ear distinguished the sound of hushed voices, and instantly his hearing seemed to become abnormally acute. He listened, holding his breath. "That he should have come to this house to-night, of all nights!'! It was the elder woman who spoke. "Don't be a squeamish fool. l Don't you realise what this unexpected chance means? It means safety!" And ihen the girl's voice, raised a little in horror and indignation and shrinking, as it seemed to the startled listening man. "No, no—it would be infamous! He trusts us."

"What of that now? Scruples are for ordinary occasions, not for a time like this. And some convict scum—do you believe "that story he told you, to trade on your pity? Do as I tell you. My mind is made up, and if you refuse The harsh voice was suddenly lowered; the man in the room heard no more, though what he had hoard was menacing enough. Kvery nerve in him felt alert and tingling. He crept softly to the door and turned the handle." Locked! Tt only needed that discovery to convince him 'that he was in a trap. He ran across to the window and tore aside the blind. His escape was cut off bv (hat wav too—there were bars of steel outside the window; he must have seen them unconsciously whilst he was speaking to the girl, but their presence came to him now like an unexpected shock. He stood white and unnerved, with a <?reat horror fast closing round his heart. He was trapped!

\Miat was lie to do? His imprisonment seemed to have robbed him of his nerve and self-reliance. Then, as he stood there caught in thp coils of impotent helplessness, he heard the outer door of the house open and ?hut. Who had gone out? Was lie alone in this strange house? As if galvanised to sudden activity, the trapped man ran to the door and shook it with all his force. There was no answering sound, lie looked desperately round the room, he could see nothing there to enable him to force the door—a curiously heavy one, and, as he believed, boiled as well as locked on the outside. The poker was a thin, flimsy thing, that crumpled up under pressure as he tried to use it as a lever. He ahouted at the top of his voice like a madman. No answer. Somewhere away in the fog he heard the sound of a shrill whistle, repeated again arid again. Was that whistle being blown to bring the warders or the police hot-foot on his trail? It was useless to struggle any longer; he was caged. He had trusted to a'woman's promise and she had betrayed it and him; and as that bitter thought was in his mind Strode heard the sound of quick footsteps coming downstairs, heard the voice of the girl whose eyes had pitied him, who he was sure had had no part in this betrayal. "I'm coming to help you." He heard the bolt on the outside shot back. The door was flung open. The girl confronted him with almost unoontrollible agitation in her fas&

"Oh, I—l couldn't bear to let this thing be done! If only you had gone away when I apoke to you first—anything better than that you should have come here to this place!" she broke out feverishly, hatf hysterically. "Come quickly—there's no time to lose! You may trust me; I only want to help you," "I do trust you; I knew from the lirst I could trust you," he said. He added bitterly: "I suppose my hostess has gone to try to find the warders or some village police, to give me up?" The girl shuddered, but did not answer. '

"Take this coat and cap—they will help to disguise you." As she held thein out he saw that her hands were shaking. Strode slipped them on. His own nerves were strained almost to snapping point. There was something behind all this—something more than appeared 011 the surface—something that had brought Fear as an unhidden guest to this house. He remembered the girl's terror in his first sight of her—that terror which had seemed to infect him, too, almost as he crossed the threshold. The kitchen door at the end of the stone passage was still open, and again his eyes followed the little trail on the floor. From where he stood his view was circumscribed; but he saw that the screen where the trail had ended no longer stood there, and on the flagged floor was something gleaming in the lamplight stretching out to him from the hall like a dark stain. Hardly knowing what his impulse was, Strode made a sudden movement as if to go to that open door at the end of the passage. The girl sprang forward breathlessly, clutching his arm, -as if she read his impulse born of that sudden horror and suspicion; he felt the trembling of the fingers in that pressure that recalled him to himself. *

"For Heaven's sake, come away!" she whispered, agitatedly. "Come at once!"

Strode turned and looked into the white face without a word. They walked to the outer dorr.

By the door the girl, whose name he did not know, stood listening for a moment before she opened it. Xo sound to disquiet him. The thick wreathing mist met them chilly, orange in the light from the hall. Faintly from far awav came again the sound of the whistle. Strode knew who was blowing that whistle—and why: the elder woman's infamous treachery, from which this girl had resolved to save him.

"Listleigh lies in that direction," and the girl pointed -through the murk. "You'll he safe if you go f at once." The warmth and food and those fifteen minnte 3 of snatched sleep seemed to have brought back some of his strength —that and the new hope in him. And the long coat that covered his tell-tale clothes gave him fresh confidence. His identity would not be suspected from his appearance now by any stranger -he might encounter, of whom he might have to enquire the way. "Good-bye, and God bless you!" he cried, earnestly. He paused; then, before he turned away: "Before I go, won't you tell me your name —that I can think of you by it when I look back, as I shall often look back, gratefully, on your kindness and pity?"

She shook her head. "Xo. I don't want you to look back. All I ask is that you should forget me and forget to-night. You must not linger. Every lost moment brings danger nearer." At the gate Strode turned, to see the girl's slender form and the face with the haunted, tragic eyes, and its sad, wistful beauty that had knocked at the door of his heart, mistily outlined against the light of the wall. A moment later the watching figure was lost to sight, as the fog swallowed up from his eyes the lonely house and its unsolved secret. But he carried away with him a mental picture of her face, that had made an impression on him which no other woman's face had ever done. Before his arrest and sentence two years ago John Strode had been engaged ,to a girlpretty Evie Moore, whom lie had known and cared for all his life, who had told him that she would wait for him until his bondage was over and he was free to come to her again. But this girl who was not even a name to him seemed in a night to have thrust aside in his mind even his thoughts of Evie; it was this unknown girl's face that he carried back with him to prison to serve out those remaining three*years, no part of which would be remitted now in consequence of his attempted escape. For before twenty-four hours had passed Strode was taken again—in his mother's house at Listleigh. But his object had been achieved at least. Her dying eyes had looked upon her son, and mercifully Death had found her, holding her son's hand in hers, beiore there came at the door the tramp of the feet of men from the prison. But before the grim walls closed on him again things had ceased to matter for the time for John Strode. He was light-headed; that day of strain and exposure on the moors had resulted in an utter breakdown. For weeks he lay ill and delirious in the prison infirmary. When at last he came back to life and consciousness the events of that night's strange happenings in the lonely unknown house seemed almost like part of some fever-dream. He could hardly be sure whether be had not dreamed all, or at least part of it. ■ Only the memory of the girl's face remained with him; it was like an obsessing fascination to Strode through tliose three vears before the day of freedom en me, and the prison door?, opened for him at last to the wide ways of the world.

■Tohn Strode went back to life a changed man: that was natural enough after those five years that had broken Km. Most of all. perhaps, the girl to whom he had been engaged—the pr'rl who had waited with an unwavering loyalty for her lover—found him changed. He felt tenderly grateful to her for her patient devotion during these waiting years lhat had robbed her of something of the oM girlish charm and prettiness; only this strange fascination lay over him like a species of madness, for which lie sometimes reproached and hated himself as he looked into Evie's loving eyes, for that other woman, whose face, with its haunting beauty, with its mingled pity and fear, had seemed to throw a spell over him.

The feeling that he must see her again was too strong to be shaken oft. I'or days after his release Strode fmi'ilit against the impulse, feeling that it was disloyal to the woman who had waited for him, who loved him with all her heart d'sloval because the sight of this girl a"ain would only be to feed that fascination that had gripped him in spite of himself. One day he took train for Devonshire, made Listleigh his startingplace, and tried to retrace to that loaely cottage the way he bad taken in the It wa.9 a queer quest. He did not know the name of the house, or of the village it was near, or the name of the people; and he had only the vaguest, most confused impression of what that house, that he had only seen in the veiling mist three years ago, was likeHe tired himself out by tramping all that day. At last he had to give up

the hunt. It seemed as though he was never to hear any word or clue again. (He soimetiines even wondered whether the'girl had ever existed at all outside him imagination—whether the events of that strange Christmas Eve had not all been part of his fever-dreams, (But John Strode was to hear news. It was a year later, on the eve of his marriage. Throughout that year following his release, if he had never ceased to dream of the girl whose face had flashed out of the fog four years ago, he had realised how mad that strange infatuation was; and he could not be susli a coward as to break off his engagement to the girl who had spent the five best years of her life waiting for him; besides, he was attached to her in a quiet, tender way. Their marriage would be happy enough. She was coming down the steps of the Cathedral in Westminster as he was entering one afternoon; almost on the threshold they met, with a start of mutual recognition—Strode and the hardfeatured, middle-aged woman who would have betrayed him when he should shelter at her house.

She would have hurried past him, her face visibly whitening; but he stopped her.

"I see you remember me. I want to ask something of you," he said, with quiet courtesy.

She turned and faced him almost defiantly.

"But I don't wish to speak to you," she said, in a low. fierce tone. "Between us—you indirectly; I admit that, of course —wc have so much to answer for, you and I. If you hadn't come that night by some accursed chance, we—she and I—might have hidden all traces, and none of the evil that followed would have come!"

He stared at her in perplexity. Evidently the woman believed 1 he Was as well acquainted as she with her meaning; only it was a riddle to him. "I don't know what you mean," he said.

"You don't understand —when the moment you entered the house that night you saw the very traces of the man's death ?" incredulously.

Strode drew a quick breath as a thought suddenly flashed on him, as he remembered that trail along the passage —that looking back he had almost come to believe part of a fever-dream.

"The man's death?" he echoed. He added swiftly: "And it was to fix the guilt of your crime on my shoulders that you tried to trap and betray me?" She looked at him in amazement.

"My guilt!" she cried, harshly. "You fool! 'Haven't you read in the papers about it ? Of course, you were in prison at the time; but surely you must have heard ?"

"I've hear nothing," he said, quickly. "T never knew your name or hers. And it was not to reproach you that I stopped you now; but simply to ask for news of the girl who was kind to me that night." The woman gave a little gasping, halfhysterical cry that startled him. For a moment she seemed to sway unsteadily. "So you haven't heard? I thought everyone in England must have heard!" she said, in an odd whisper; there was a strange look in her face. "You thought 1 killed that man, her husband? —at least she hid believed him to be her husband. I may be cold and hard, but I don't think I could have brought myself to sacrifice you—as I meant to do four years ago —or anyone, to screen myself . . . but to save her,- yes!"

this strange woman cried. "Oh, lam not defending myself, or the plan that went awry; it was a shameful thing I planned to screen and save her. But she was so young and fair and gentle, and I loved iicr. I haven't loved many people in this sordid, ugly world we're flung down in!"

"You mean that she—she killed her husband?" The words were half incredulous.

"Yes. I heard you speak of the .man because of whom you were sentenced to Dartmoor—well, lie was just such a man as that! He had wronged her infamously—dear Heaven, how he made my darling suffer!" she broke out with a passionate fierceness. "He tired of her, as such men always tire —and then he told her so plainly—that he wanted to be rid of her: he was on the eve of making a brilliant social marriage. I couldn't have "believed any man so vile. And she killed him —I think for the moment she was mad—killed him as he deserved. He was a well-known painter; no doubt you've seen some of his pictures; they fetch a great deal of money now. His name was Rensmark, It was the afternoon of the day you came." She paused. Strode stood listening in horror.

"He was lying dead in the house; no one knew but ourselves. I was half mad . . . . how to' save her? And you came." she went on. "If you hadn't come I had meant, as a last desperate resort, to drag the dead man out on t-o the moov and leave him there; but suspicion might have fastened. . . and you coming suggested the plan when I was at my wits' end. A shameful plan, of course; I could think of nothing but. of saving her. She guessed what was in my mind, and taxed me with it—l had to tell her; I said it was the only way. I thought I had persuaded her." The woman paused; then continued: "I see now her acquiescence was only feigned to deceive me, in order that she might effect your escape, as she did, whilst I was out trying to find the warders who wore 'hunting you. I brought them bark to the house —I had coached her in the role she was to play on uiy return. Before we got to the house I told them of the escaped convict who hart killed Rensmark in a struggle, and how I had overpowered the murderer with a revolver and had locked him in a v room. I had told mv story well. 'Xo suspicion would have attached to her—only by the time I brought the warders and a police constable who had heard the whistle, the room was empty. You had gone. "And then, remembering what I had overheard you say, I cried to them; 'But you'll find him at Listleigh! His mother lives there.'

"And as though my darling realised that in spite of all she had done to defeat my plans the net was still tight about you, that you couldn't escape, that you'd be charged with her guilt, she cried out, suddenly and impulsively, to save you, who were, innocent:

" 'No, no! You mustn't listen to her—jt isn't true. I killed him myself—l 'killed him deliberately! It is I alone who am guilty!' "And with that cry she fell fainting." "And then?" he whispered. '•She was tried for murder. It's in all the papers of the time. I made a great stir, of course. I almost wonder you were not called as a witness." But that had been during the weeks when he was lying ill and delirious. Besides, what evidence could he have given? "And I gave evidence how infamously this man had treated her. . . . But he was a man of many positions, of many frlends; the story was not believed. And she " Her voice broke, Strode looked at her in horror.

"But—but you don't mean that she—that she " He could not finish the words.

"Oh, I think they were fiends!" she whispered; voicelessly. "She was found guilty." lie looked at her, realising all that the words meant. Something seemed to he clutching at his throat chokingly. He turned and walked away like a man stunned.

John Strode has married the other woman, and all their friends describe It as a happy marriage. This grave, rather silent man is the best of husbands. His wife, trying gently sometimes to draw him out of those sad, preoccupied moods that seem to have become habitual to him since his release from prison, never dreams that he is thinking of another woman—a woman who died nearly four years before their marriage. For John Strode has not forgotten and never will forget.