"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10070, 18 August 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

CHAPTER XXlll.—Continued

As she hurried along holding the boy's hand, raked with a fever of suspense, listening with strained ears for some sound from the house she had just left, a dark figure stole out from a doorway opposite, and followed cautiously on th:> other sideof the road, as silently and stealth- 1 ily as her own shadow. Round the end of the dark street at last, almost marveling that thore had been 110 hue and cry, feeling her strength failing her under ..the shock and strain of what she had passed ■through,. to find a cab waiting, and safely ahead. It deemed like a miracle to her. The cabman looked curiously at the white faced, agitated woman who staggered up to him, leading the b»y, and he wondered what her "little game" was; but, after all, it was no concern of his. She was paying him well, which was the principal thing that interested him. He jumped down and opened the door; lifted the child in for her. Judith thrust more money into his hands, and told him in a voice she could scarcely control, to drive her to Clapham Junction. Theft she stepped unsteadily into the cab'; and, '.almost as she leaned back on the before she heard the man close the door, in tfoe overwhelming revulfeion qf feeling that Bwept over her, concsiousness faded away. It seemed to her that she had been unconcsious only a moment or two, and that through her mantle, struggling back from the void of oblivion, she heard a fiaint cry. Judith opened her eyes and looked about her vaguely, and then a wild scream broke from her. She was alone in the cab. In Heaven's name, what habecome of: Gilbert. The sound of her piercing crycaused the cabman to draw up with a jerk. He jumped down fropi his . seat and was. at the door, as Judith put her head wildly out of the window. "The child'sgone. What's happened to the boy—what's happened to the boy!" she cried wildly, like a madwoman. "I fainted, I think, and now I find myself alone in the cab, and the boy gone! Where is he? You must know—you must wnow! Are you in league against me?" The cabman looked in at the window with a startled expression. Certainly the cab had only one occupant now, though he himself liad lifted the child in. For a moment -lie looked sharply at the woman. •But the suspicion died out. Her agitation was not acting; it was palpably real. He shook his head. "I was held up a moment or two; but then the boy couldn't have opened the door himself," said the driver. "And, if the door had burst open, it wouldn't be shut now. I heard nothing, and saw nothing.""You were held up—what do you mean ?" Her wild eyes startled him. It seemed they were not much more than a couple tif hundred yards from the end of the street Judith had got into the cab; Judith's swoon had only been for a few minutes' duration. It was not a particularly busy street; but, as the cabma« briefly explained, almost immediately after they had started, he had had to stop, held up for a minute or two by a cross current of traffic, a procession of heavily laden wagons. "If any one opened the cab door and kidnapped the young 'un, it must have been then," he added. The weakness of a moment ago was gone—forgotten. Judith jumped down from the cab, and began running blindly back down the Street Mk? JV madwoman. Her veil was up; tiiere was 110 longer any thought in her mind of disguising herself in this neighbourhood where she had been known. This swfftly falling blow, the shock of her child's inexplicable disappearance, had swept all thought or sonsideration of prudence from her mind—seemed indeed, t© li'ave swept even her sanity away for the time. She was a halfdetmanted woman, running wildly back into the danger zone It must have been at i3ie cross street, where the cab had stopped, held up for a minute or two, that the child had been mysteriously abducted—that was the one conscious thought of which her mind was now ; capable. Her own danger was forgotten, swallowed up in this terror of what had befallen her child. As she ran, her eyes searched wildly aJjout her; but 110 sign of Gilbert. Oniy, suddenly, a cry broke in even through her absorbed thoughts: "By Heaven! There she is*! There's the woman!" It was the man she had left stunned in the house from which she had just fled—Burt. He had been talking excitedly to a couple of policemen, loking white-faced and shaken, when hie startled eyes caught sight of Judith herself, the woman of whom he was speaking, coming in his direction. With a gasping cry breaking from her, her hurried footsteps faltered, and stopped dead. Bhe clutched blindly for support at the railings

? BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTON. l» Author of—"Tlia College Chum," " WortbinsjfcDii'a | Pledge," " A Kejjtniant Fee," oiu.

CHAPTER XXV,

by the door of a house near, feeling faint and dizzy, with a sudden, surging realisation that the end had conae. The two policemen made a quick movement forward at Burt's (fry, as the man pointed his finger excitedly at the woman, shouting: "There she is, the woman for whose arrest there's a reward offered—the woman who murdered her husband, Gilbert Ilardrcss!" Grasping the railings to prevent herself from falling, powerless to move or fly, Judith, • with dilating' eyes of horror, saw-her fate coming swiftly towards her at Jast..

AN UNLATCHED DOOR

"There she stands—Judith Hardress, the woman the police want for the murder of her husband!" There was an exultant note of triumph in Tom Burt's oxcited erv, and a light of intense malice gleamed in his eyes as he pointed an accusing finger at the woman whose white face ,as he stood talking excitedly to the two policemen in the street, had flashed up to his eyes in the light of a street lamp. Judith's unexpected attack on him in the darkness after he had crept softly upstairs to confront the woman who had stolen like a thief into the house to see her child—the biow that had made hi in reel, causing him as lie fell to strike his head, had stunned Ifim, but only for a few moments. Almost at once Burt had recovered himself—had staggered to his feet gropingly, his head dizzy atid aching, and lighted the candle again, to find, of course, thai the woman he had nearly trapped was gone with the boy. Scarcely more than five minutes after Judith had fled, Burt had followed in pursuit. However, he had run up the street and into the road where some minutes before Judith had taken a cab. At the corner of a crossroad he had found two policemen to whom he was excitedly pouring out his story when, to his amazement, he caught a glimpse of the woman herself. Turning a*t his excited cry, one of the policemen, at least, had recognised the fleeing woman at whom , Tom Burt's finger was pointed—the woman who had stopped suddenly, as tjie accusing cry reached her, with tfte sense of a sudden, great horror sweeping over her. Faiijfc and dizzy, feeling that nothing could save her now, Judith abruptly stopped, clutching blindly ?ror support at the railings of the tall house. The end was come! Her w?ld, desperate eyes saw the two policemen move swiftly forward, advancing upon her, to arrest her for murder. Fdi* an instant Judith stood, panting and motionless, like a hunted creature at bay. Then, with thfe instinct of the hunted to fight to the last, even when the fight was hopeless, with the two approaching officers scarcely ten yards away, Judith galvanised into sudden activity ,madc a dash up the steps to the door at which she stood. A hundred chances to one against her; yet that one bare chance came to the woman's rescue now'! The handle turned, the door opened ,and in a moment the fugitive was through, as if into an unexpected sanctuary, and had the door I closed agaiai before the police reach- [ ed the steps ,and a heavy bolt inside shot ,the sound of which was heard plainly in tlie street by the gathering crowd. The action was so swift, the woman's disappearance so unexpected, that at first the police, who had been confident of effecting an easy arrest, were taken by surprise. It complicated matters a little. But escape by the back would be difficult. There was no back way. The house was joined to houses on each side. There was no doubt in the minds of the police that it was the woman for whom a warrant had been issued; one of tliem had recognised the wk'e of Gilbert Hardress. . Tom Burt slMuted excitedly: , "You've got her trapped! There's no way out by the back! Have her out—have the murdress of Gilbert Hardress out!" He was savagely eager for Kevenge. "I hope they'll force the door and drag her out handcuffed!" he vindictively cried to a by-stander. "You may bet your life they won't do that," said the man addressed dryly. "Even if. there's a suspected murdress insi le, the police'll have to knock and wait till the door's opened. Do:i't forget they haven't a search warrant; they'd soon find themselves in trouble forcing their way into private folks' houses!" (To be Cor tinned).