CHAPTER XV

THAT EVENING

During the morning Mrs. Pullen called Sam up to tell him she would be kept out all day by important business. Jessie heard this piece of information from Pap at lunch time. Except for Pap shuffling in and out of the room, Jessie ate her lunch alone. Both Sam and Bill were keeping out of her way for reasons of their own, and Abell had not come down from his sleeping room up on the top floor.

After lunch Jessie returned to her room. She kept the back of a chair propped under the handle of her door for what protection it would afford, but there was no attempt to disturb her again. She was sitting by her window for coolness when she saw Sam cross the yard below with tools in his hand. Evidently he was on his way to fix the sliding door. It occurred to Jessie that this would be a good opportunity to send a message outside. She knew that Pap and Bill were in the kitchen, two floors below. To be sure, Abell might come out of his room overhead, but he was so sore against the outfit, she was inclined to chance his betraying her. Her wandering about the house might easily be ascribed to a girl's natural curiosity anyhow.

The door of Mrs. Pullen's room was not locked. Jessie smiled at the picture that met her eyes, it was so different from what one might have expected. It appeared that, within her own sanctum, Black Kate was a bit of a sybarite. There was a deep-piled rug on the floor; there was a divan heaped with cushions in silken covers, each with a voluminous frill. The imposing brass bed had a lace spread and "pillow-shams," the pictures on the walls were of the melting school of Bougoureau; there was an immense bureau with an opulent display of silver toilet articles.

A hasty glance around assured Jessie that there was no written evidence that might be useful to her; the astute Mrs. Pullen would not be so foolish, of course. Her next move was to glance out of the window without disturbing the lace curtains. She saw that it was indeed Varick Street below. That thoroughfare is unmistakable owing to its recent widening, which has left all the ancient houses on one side of the street, with odd-shaped vacant lots, and crude new structures on the other. Jessie then went into the closet to telephone, leaving both doors open behind her to guard against surprise.

She called up your humble servant, Bella Brickley, and this brings me into the story again. I need not say how overjoyed I was to hear her dear voice again. I did not even know that she was out of prison, since the news of her escape had been kept out of the papers. It bowled me right over, and I blubbered into the telephone like a child.

It was all very brief. She gave me the main facts of the situation so phrased that nobody but myself could have understood it. She did not dwell upon her own danger, but I perceived it clearly enough, and then I was ready to weep with terror. Her instructions were that if I did not hear from her again within a week, I was to carry the information to Inspector Rumsey of the police, for him to act upon as he saw fit. But I was to make no move until the week was up.

"Should I not arrange to have some one listen in on their conversations?" I asked.

"No," said my mistress quickly. "They are too clever to give themselves away over the phone. Besides, a sharp ear can detect when the wire is open. If they suspected they were watched it would frustrate my whole scheme. I want them to have all the rope there is."

I bade her good-bye with a heavy heart.

Jessie's discouragement was but momentary. The greater the difficulties, the greater the demands upon her. She found herself able to rise to them. Her course of action was clear; apart from the detestable business of sex, she must make these men like her. Impossible as it might seem, they must meet on another plane than sex. She planned to unite them with herself by means of their common resentment against their inhuman taskmasters.

All the men came to the supper table, and in addition there appeared a new member of the gang, a big loutish fellow, whom they called Fingy Silo. He, with his thick lips and little swimming eyes, was the most frankly sensual of the lot. A sweep of dark hair obscured his low forehead, and his mouth generally hung open. He seemed to have scarcely more intelligence than an ape, and he had in addition that quality of brutality which is purely man's, and man's worst quality. Throughout the meal he stared at Jessie unabashed. Jessie, blandly ignoring it, treated him with the same offhand friendliness the others, but he only goggled at her stupidly. She was at a disadvantage in dealing with such a one; her methods were too fine for him.

It was a curious assortment that faced her, and she the only woman amongst them. Bill Combs had recovered his usual stolidity and his face gave nothing away. Skinny Sam was quieter than his wont, and glinted at Jessie through his lashes with evil eyes. Then there was the decayed Pap with his senile giggle; little white-faced Abell, who scarcely ever looked up from his plate; and finally this big lout, Fingy Silo. Jessie gallantly applied herself to the unpromising material.

"Gee! this is as cheerful as a funeral!" she cried. "Cheer up, boys! There'll be no wash in Heaven! Don't yeh never have a word to say wit' yer meals? I should think yer food would choke yeh. Me, I gotta talk or die. Pass the lobscouce, Pap."

Only Pap responded at first. "You're feelin' pretty good to-night, eh?" said he with his disagreeable smile. He did not intend it to be disagreeable, but he was a little warped.

"Feel good!" cried Jessie. "I'm desperate. I gotta holler and act the fool to keep my spirits up."

This struck an answering chord in Abell, who lifted his head with a faint smile on his white face. It was almost the first notice he had taken of Jessie. "Like a kid, when he walks by the cemetery," he said.

"Sure," said Jessie, waving her hand about the table. "Look at them corpses."

There was something between her and Abell that the others did not share in; the knowledge of a better way of living.

"Speaking of corpses," she went on, "did you ever hear the story of Crematory Johnson who riz and walked?" She told the droll negro tale with all the delicious mimicry for which she was famous in another sphere. Fun is fun just the same in any walk of life; Big Bill rumbled with laughter in his diaphragm, and Pap fairly squealed.

"Gee! Fuzzy-Wuz can tell a story all right," he said delightedly.

The name stuck.

Jessie capped it with another and another. Even Sam, seeing how the current was running, made haste to swim with it, and he, at least, made believe to laugh as heartily as the rest. The new-comer, Fingy Silo, continued to stare at Jessie like an animal.

Whatever a man's private griefs or passions, he can rarely resist an invitation to sociability. It worked a marvel around that gloomy board. Loud, cheerful talk became general, and all (excepting Fingy) beamed on each other in the most friendly fashion. No one could have supposed that a shadow lay on any of them. Both Abell, in his quiet way, and Bill Combs, in his stolid way, proved to have a talent for story-telling, and they added their contributions. Jessie was aware every minute that the ugly passions were only slumbering, and that a single wrong word would provoke an explosion. She ran the show.

In the middle of it, Abell said thoughtlessly: "This is just like old times!"

"What old times?" asked Jessie.

All the men turned silent and uncomfortable. Jessie thought: "They mean when Melanie was here!" She made haste to tell another story.

Some word brought up Woburn, and Jessie was induced to tell the story of her escape. The incident of the Warden's tea-party made the most successful story of all, because that was real, and it came close home to all of them.

After supper there was a general move downstairs to the kitchen to smoke. "So far, so good," thought Jessie. "It doesn't mean much, but it's a beginning. Should I go to my room now? ... No, it would risk what I have gained. I must see it through to the end."

On the way downstairs she happened to be next to Abell. He slipped his hand under her arm, and whispered with a touching burst of confidence: "You know, I got a fine boy twelve years old. You wouldn't think it, would you? I was married when I was nineteen. He's most ready for High School already. That boy's going to make something of himself!"

"Isn't that bully!" Jessie whispered back, greatly moved. To herself she whispered exultantly: "I am making progress!"

In the kitchen Pap piled all the dishes in the sink, "until morning." Somebody suggested a game of Bridge. Bridge in a thieves' kitchen! This struck Jessie as comic. There were six of them, and only four could play; a dispute arose as to who should be included. The situation was too hazardous for Jessie to think of keeping her mind on cards, and she said: "Count me out. I ain't got no card sense."

Whereupon the dispute was reversed. Neither Bill, Sam, nor Fingy wanted to play then. Finally the game was given up in disgust. At this moment Sam, unluckily, happened to finger the bump on the back of his head tenderly. This induced Bill to tell the story of Sam's discomfiture that day. Sam retired from the room white with rage. The evening appeared to be spoiled. Jessie couldn't whoop up sociability again, for to be successful that sort of thing must appear to come about naturally. So she made believe to be bored.

"Can't anybody raise a song?" she said.

It transpired that Abell possessed a ukelele. He was sent to fetch it.

Totally unregardful of his listeners, Abell sat slumped down in a kitchen chair, his head brooding over his instrument, his eyes half closed. He sang coon songs in a droning, nasal voice, but with charm. He made no effort to please; he had temperament, as they call it; he gave himself up to his singing, and they all listened with pleasure.

It was a queer enough scene under the single gas-get. Every now and then air came through the gas-pipe, and the jet hissed and flared. The walls and ceiling of the room had been painted a ghastly blue, which was now much discoloured by greasy kitchen smoke. The edges of the cupboard doors were black with finger-marks, and most of the doors were hanging by a single hinge. Bill, Pap, and Fingy were sitting roughly in a row with their backs to the outside door and window, all three balancing on the hind legs of their chairs. The first-named was smoking an ancient pipe, much charred around the edge of the bowl; the other two lit one cigarette from the butt of the last. Abell sat across the room from the two stoves, his heels on the edge of a dresser. Jessie sat alone facing the three, with two doors at her back. One of these doors led to a pantry, the other to the basement hall.

Without appearing to, Jessie, while she smoked her cigarette, was studying Fingy Silo, who presented a new problem to her. He was still young, but a man of that coarse type loses the attractiveness of youth before he is out of boyhood—if, indeed, he had ever had it. He was immensely powerful without being well-shapen; his neck looked thicker than the head it bore. Jessie had scarcely heard him open his mouth; but her intuition told her that as a result of his long, brutal stare, he would presently act. How could one handle a man so impervious? You couldn't reach him from the outside. He was moved regardless, by slow, dim forces within.

Between songs, while Abell was tuning his instrument, Fingy arose, and coolly picking up his chair, carried it across the room and placed it beside Jessie's. This act had all the effect of a direct challenge to Bill, but Jessie saw that Fingy did not intend it as such. With perfect egotism, it never occurred to him that any other man might prefer a claim to the girl. Bill said nothing at the moment, but his pained eyes began to burn dangerously, and the air of the room became charged as with thunder.

Abell, with no thought apart from his instrument, began another song. Fingy behind his hand, with absurd obviousness, whispered to Jessie: "Fuzzy-Wuz, you're a damn good-lookin' girl."

"Cut it out," said Jessie indifferently. "I'm not interested."

It did not penetrate.

From across the room came Bill's voice. The big man was still keeping a hold on himself. "If you got anything to say, Fingy, speak out."

Fingy looked at him with a surprised, black scowl. Then he looked at Jessie. It took him some moments to figure the situation out. Meanwhile Abell went on with his song.

Once more Fingy put up his hand. "Come on out in the yard," he whispered. "You can hear just as good out there."

"I told you to cut it out," said Jessie, giving him her full glance. "You may as well get it through your head. There's nothing doing."

But his little eyes gloated on her without giving a sign of having heard.

"Hold up a minute, Abie," said Bill, putting up his palm. The musician looked up in surprise.

"I got a word to say to Fingy," Bill went on. "We all know that this sort of business is against the rules. Well, none of us cares so damn much about the rules as that. But we can't all break this rule, and nachelly the rest of us isn't goin' to stand by and see one get away with it."

"That's just talk," said Fingy. "You mean you want the girl yourself."

"All right," said Bill sticking out his jaw. "What about it?"

"You'll have to fight me for her," said Fingy. There was something impressive about such simplicity.

"Any time," said Bill.

Jessie picked up her chair, and planted it with its back to the gas-stove, exactly between the two parties. "You can fight if you want," she said indifferently, "but it will do you no good. I don't want either of you. The winner means no more to me than the loser. I mean to keep myself to myself. Go on with your song, Abie."

The ukelele set up its whining again, but after a moment or two Fingy said to Bill in the same tone as before: "Well, are you man enough to fight for her?"

Bill said nothing at all, but got up with a surprising alacrity, an eager glitter in his eyes. Jessie was enraged by their attitude towards women. Obviously, her feelings meant nothing to either of them. But she had wit enough to see that the situation had passed out of her influence, and she kept her mouth shut. Abell got up with an air that said it was none of his concern, and went out through the hall. Jessie heard him mount the stairs with a sinking heart. The most nearly civilised one in the house!

She considered whether she should go to her room. But, no! One of them would only follow her there later, and she had no means of keeping him out. She must see the thing through on the spot.

Neither Bill nor Fingy had worn a coat in the kitchen. They now unlaced their shoes and kicked them off, eyeing each other. Pap was in great excitement. He took up his stand in the doorway leading to the hall, where he could see all that went on, yet keep an ear open for the possible return of Mrs. Pullen. Jessie leaned against a table, affecting to look out of the window. But she was not as superhumanly indifferent to the scene as she appeared. By keeping a little to one side of the window, she could see all that happened reflected in the glass.

She gathered that these affairs were conducted according to a code of their own. All contestants were in honour bound to make as little noise as possible; hence the stocking feet. There was no punching; that made too much noise; they wrestled; and, apparently, any foul grip and dirty trick was permissible, if you could get away with it.

The two men circled the floor, watching each other for an opening with dehumanised fighting faces. They were well enough matched; Bill was the more powerful, but Fingy was perhaps fifteen years younger. Their sagging clothes rendered their bodies hideous; their ugly flat feet seemed to adhere to the floor. There promised to be nothing glorious about this fight. Jessie shivered—not with fear, but with repulsion.

Pap, biting his fingers in the doorway, could not stand the suspense. "A-ah! Mix it! Mix it!" he quavered.

Suddenly they came together. Bill had his mighty arms locked around the other's body, while Fingy, pushing with all his strength against Bill's chest, sought to raise his knee high enough between them to break Bill's hold. One forgot their cumbering clothes then; they were rather magnificent. Jessie was reminded of a pair of figures in a Grecian frieze that she had seen. That same pose had been caught twenty-five hundred years ago.

And Fingy succeeded; Bill's arms were burst asunder. Before he could recover, Fingy, making a half turn, hooked his throat within his left elbow, and catching the elbow with his right hand, dragged Bill's head back gagging, until Jessie thought his neck must break. He had his knee in the middle of Bill's back for a fulcrum. Back, and still back, Bill struggling in vain to turn within that strangling grip, his great chest bursting. Bill got an arm over Fingy's head, and his hand groped for Fingy's face; he found it; his flexed fingers found Fingy's eyes, and Jessie closed her eyes in horror. The pain forced Fingy to let go. Once more they circled for an opening. Jessie expected to see two bloody holes in Fingy's face, but apparently his eyes were uninjured. Bill was sobbing for breath. That was where his age told against him. Fingy, snatching for a hold, missed, and tore Bill's shirt half off his back. The vast back was too fat.

And so it went. Bill had plenty of strength, but he was slow of movement, and his wind was not over good. Still, in a rough and tumble like that, mere bulk was an advantage. Fingy could not throw him. He fell on Fingy once, knocking the wind out of him, and savagely banged his head against the floor, until Jessie turned sick with disgust, but bit her lips to keep from crying out. She was not going to betray the least interest in the outcome, though they tore each other's flesh to ribbons. However, Fingy succeeded in wriggling free, before he was beaten into unconsciousness.

Bill was absolutely indifferent to punishment; planted like a great tree or a hill, he took Fingy from whichsoever quarter he came. On the other hand, Fingy had a wholesome respect for those terrible arms. Neither man had much science; Bill's ceaseless effort was to crush Fingy to his breast, and bear him down, while Fingy sought to hook him from the side, or from behind. Fingy played safe, aiming to let Bill tire himself out, and he bade fair to succeed too; for the big man's eyes became glazed with fatigue. It was not clean wrestling; many a blow was exchanged. Blood trickled down Bill's back, and running from Fingy's nose, got itself spread all over his face. Pap grinned, and held up his clenched fists at the sight. What was left of their shirts clung saturated with sweat to their flesh.

The big man proved to have a bit of strategy in his thick skull after all. He changed his tactics, and half presented his back to Fingy, as if inviting that hook which had almost finished him in the beginning. Fingy, suspecting a trick, refused, until Bill, with a vicious, foul blow, angered him beyond all prudence. Fingy hooked Bill savagely around the neck from behind; whereupon Bill dropped to a crouching position, and half-turning, got an arm under Fingy. Straightening up, he heaved the younger man clean over his head, Fingy's heels rapping against the plaster ceiling, and flung him with a crash on the floor. Fingy lay still. It seemed to Jessie that every bone in his body must be broken.

Bill stood back, looking down at him indifferently. As well as he could for panting, he said: "I guess that'll hold you."

Pap bustled in, and making haste to draw water in a dipper, flung it in Fingy's face. Fingy twisted his head from side to side, and presently raised himself, leaning against one quivering arm. Jessie was greatly relieved; she had no desire to assist at a murder. Fingy looked sick and shaken; all the vice was out of him.

"Can you get up?" Pap asked anxiously. "Try to get to your bed before Kate comes home."

Pap and Bill raised him between them, and Pap led him out through the door. There was a coat hanging on the back of the door, which Bill put on to hide his blood and his nakedness. He looked at Jessie in a proprietary way.

"Come on outside," he said with a nod.

"I won't," said Jessie.

He came towards her. She stood her ground, looking at him steadily. He thrust his hideous face close to hers. "D'ye think I'm going to listen to your nonsense now?" he said. "If you won't walk I'll drag you."

Jessie considered all her chances in a flash. Pap would presently return. But Pap was of no use to her. She would have a better chance of handling the man without witnesses. So she walked to the yard door, keeping her head up, and climbed the four steps with Bill at her heels. The night air was sweet in her nostrils. No lighted window looked down into that dark hold between the front building and the rear. This moment was to put her guiding maxim in life to the supreme test. She believed that a brave soul could not be humbled.

Standing in the very centre of the little flagged yard, she waited for Bill.

"Well, ain't you got nothin' for me?" he grumbled.

"No," she said. "I told you that before."

"I won you fair, didn't I?"

"You haven't won me until I give myself to you."

"It had to be either him or me."

"That's just a man's nonsense. I am the one to say who shall have me!"

"Hell, girl!" he said violently, "do you think you can live here amongst a lot of rough men without protection? And do you think you're going to get protection for nothing? Do you expect me to spend my strength fighting for you, and be satisfied with a 'thankee kindly?'"

"I didn't ask you to fight for me."

"Then he would a took you."

"I would say the same to him as to you."

"A-ah! what's all the talk about?" said Bill violently. "I fought for yeh, and I won yeh; that's according to Nature."

"It's according to animal nature. Am I no more to you than an animal?"

"I'm done talkin'!" cried Bill. He flung his arms around her. "Oh, you beauty!"

Jessie stood perfectly still, leaning far back, and keeping her hands up between them. "You are strong enough to take me," she said steadily. "But you can't do it."

"Why can't I?" he demanded with an oath.

"I'm done talking too," she said. "Look at me. You know why!"

It was light enough for them to see each other's eyes. "Don't look at me like that," he cried in a voice of rage and pain. "Don't look at me like that, or I'll do you a hurt!"

"Is it worth it, Bill?" she asked softly.

He flung her from him. "Get away from me!" he said thickly. "Get back in the house!"

She walked to the steps. Behind her she heard him cursing under his breath. The strangled sounds suggested a breast racked with pain. "Well ... he's a man!" she thought. Entering the kitchen, he was hard on her heels. Pap had returned, but Bill paid no attention to him.

"Lookee," he said to Jessie. "This house ain't big enough for you and me. I won't be responsible. You better go back where you come from. You make too much trouble around here." His pain escaped him in a final low, bitter cry: "By God! if Kate don't send you back to Woburn, I will!"

A moment later Black Kate herself entered the kitchen from the other side. Her eyelids were down, and she was curiously white about the lips. Jessie saw that another storm portended from this quarter. Skinny Sam came in soon after her, looking smug and self-conscious. It appeared that the combination against her was perfect, and Jessie awaited the event like a good loser, with a shrug. Oh well, she had done her best!

It was a foible of Mrs. Pullen's that, when she was angriest, she made believe to be calm. Nobody was deceived by it. She did not speak at once, but poked around the kitchen, closing a cupboard door here, moving a chair there. Finally she said, apropos of nothing:

"So you've been having trouble with Bill, too."

Jessie saw that anything she could say would only make matters worse, so she kept still. Neither did Bill volunteer any information. The big man was still in the grip of the feelings he did not understand. His forehead was knotty with veins, and the hand with which he emptied his pipe, and started to refill it, trembled slightly.

"You cost me a good man last night," Mrs. Pullen went on; "and you've been making trouble in the house all day.... Where's Fingy?" she demanded of the room at large.

"Gone to bed," said Pap.

"Him and Bill was fighting," said Sam.

"What, Fingy too?" said Mrs. Pullen, turning again to Jessie. "How many men do you want? All there are, I suppose.... Well, you've done for yourself here. You can't say I didn't warn you. Before another day is out, you'll be back where there are no men."

Jessie looked at Bill, but he avoided her glance. Evidently he agreed with Black Kate.

"Have you got the gag and the handcuffs?" she demanded of Sam. "I don't mean to have any more uproar here."

Sain handed her the desired articles.

"Do you mean now?" asked Jessie, astonished into speech.

"This very minute!" said Black Kate viciously. "I know where to find one of Warden Insull's men. It'll mean promotion to him to carry the famous Jessie Seipp back to Woburn.... Sara, go telephone Charlie to bring his car to the back entrance as quick as he can."

Sam left the room.

The steel bracelets jangled in the older woman's hands. "Put out your hands, girl!"

Jessie put her hands behind her and backed against a dresser. She had no thought of putting up a fight. She merely wanted to gain time.

"Hold her, Bill!" said Black Kate furiously.

Bill got up willingly enough. Jessie knew that to make an appeal to him would only be to call forth an angry retort. After that, manlike, he would have to stand by his spoken words. So she said nothing, but kept her eyes fixed on him steadily. She had only the time that it would take him to make five steps to win him. At about the third step he lost his air of willingness. At one pace from Jessie he stopped dead, and looked at the floor. Jessie was willing him to look at her. "Are you going to stand for this?" her eyes were asking.

He darted a furtive look into her face, then, just as if she had spoken, he cried with a violent gesture: "No! I'm damned if I'll stand for it!"

"What's the matter with you?" cried Kate furiously.

"The truth has got to be told," said Bill doggedly. "Did you think you'd get the truth about this—or anything else, from Sam?"

"You leave Sam out of this!"

"I was sittin' in the dining-room after breakfast," said Bill coolly; "and I heard Sam go into her room. And I heard her tell him to get out. And in a minute I heard her throw him out."

"That's a lie!" cried Black Kate.

"All right," said Bill. "Feel the back of your darlin's head, and you'll find the bump where he struck."

"Out she goes to-night!" cried Kate.

"All right," said Bill. "Remember, I'm as old a member of this organisation as you are, and I know how to reach the boss's ear without using you for my mouthpiece. If Jess goes back to Woburn, Sam goes back to Sing Sing."

It is terrible for one of these all-commanding persons to find himself or herself in an impasse. Jessie could almost have felt sorry for the woman. Black Kate changed colour and bit her lip. Finally she said, with a great air of carelessness:

"Oh well, I'll think it over for to-night."

A long breath of relief escaped silently between Jessie's lips.

Bill would not spare his adversary. "You'd damn well better think it over," he said. "To-morrow, too."

"That will do," said Kate peremptorily.

"I'm finished," said Bill, thus depriving her of even the poor satisfaction of the last word.

By this time Sam had returned to the room. He was despatched to the rear entrance to send "Charley" back when he came with the car.

"Go to bed," said Kate to Jessie.

The latter was very willing to obey. To have attempted to thank Bill then would only have caused more trouble; so she contented herself with giving him an eloquent glance as she passed.

Now Pap was so much excited by all that had happened, he scarcely knew what he was doing. Even as she left the room, out of the tail of her eye Jessie saw him cutting great hunks of bread off a loaf, and putting them on a plate. Her curiosity was instantly on the qui vive. "Who can that be for," she asked herself; "at this time of night?"

Jessie went to her room, and somewhat ostentatiously closing the door, listened just within. She heard Mrs. Pullen come up and go into her room. She heard Bill's heavy step pass her door, and go on up to the top floor. Then she heard Pap coming. When Pap had passed her door, she opened it a crack. He was carrying the plate of bread, and in his other hand he had a small pitcher, presumably containing water. "Pretty slim fare!" thought Jessie. When Pap had passed out of sight up the last flight, Jessie came out into the hall the better to hear.

Pap put a key into the door at the head of the stairs. At this moment the bell sounded that announced the return of Sam through the secret door. But it would take him a minute or two to cross the yard and mount the two flights, and Jessie waited. She heard Pap open the door above, and from within the room she heard a sound that caused her to catch her breath in astonishment; the jingle of a chain.

Pap said: "Here," and a whispered voice answered him: "Wait a minute, Pap. God! I'll go out of my mind if I never hear a human voice!" To which Pap answered in a whisper: "Nothin' doin'. She's waitin' for the key."

Jessie went back into her room with a fast-beating heart. A woman's voice! Surely it could be no other than the woman she sought! And so near! so near! An overpowering excitement filled her. However dreadful the actual situation might be, while there was life there was hope. All along Jessie had been tormented by the fear that after all she might be too late. More than a fear, it had been practically a certainty. And now to be given assurance that she was not too late! Ah! what a barren satisfaction in avenging Melanie, as compared to the joy of saving her!