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"Let the words go," I said between tightening lips, "but give me that pair of pistols, now!"

"For Sir Peter's use?"

"No, for ed, like Captain Hale?"

She whitened where she stood, tugging at her gloves, teeth set in her lower lip

"You shall neither fight nor hang," she said, her blue eyes fixed on space, busy with her gloves the while--so busy that her whip dropped, and I picked it up

There was a black loup-loves were fitted to suit her she jerked theand set it over her eyes

"My whip?" she asked curtly

I gave it

"Now," she said, "your pistol-case lies hid beneath my bed-covers Take it, Mr Renault, but it shall serve a purpose that neither you nor Walter Butler dream of!"

I stared at her without a word She opened the beaded purse at her girdle, took frouineas, and dropped them on her dresser, where they fell with a pleasant sound, rolling together in a shining heap Then, looking through her olden chain, snapped it in two, and drew a tiny ivory ht into my eyes she dropped it face upward on the polished floor It bore the likeness of Walter Butler She set her spurred heel upon it and crushed it, grinding the fragments into splinters Then she walked by me, slowly, her eyes still on htly lifted; and so, turning her head to watch one

What the strange maid meant to do I did not know, but I knehat lay beforeaside the curtains of her bed, tore the fine linen fro in downy depths, under pillow, quilt, and valance, until ed out the pistol-case and snapped it open The silver-chased weapons lay there in perfect order; under the drawer that held the-powder, shaped wads, ball, and a case of flints

So all was ready and in order I closed the case and hurried up the stairway to my rooly devised inging wide In it had been concealed that blotted sheet rejected froan empty cupboard