forced to avoid the public road--forests that none but those who knew their way could have threaded in the dense blackness of the tropical night. Yet I almost faltered, once I turned back, meaning to return to the United States and abandon my plan. For I had met an Indian, a half-caste, who told me that she, my loved, my lost Isobel was dying, that--that--she could not survive. And then--then--I made a compact with myself. I swore that it she lived I would not tear her child away from her, but that, if--if she died, then he who had made me wifeless should himself be not only wifeless but childless too. He had tricked me; now he should be tricked by me. Only--if she should live--I could not break her heart as well.

"But again I returned upon my road: I reached a copse outside Desolada, outside the house itself. I was near enough to see that the windows were ablaze with lights, sometimes even I saw people passing behind the blinds of those windows--once I saw my brother's figure and that excited me again to madness. If she were dead I swore that then, too, he should become childless. Her child should become mine, not his. I would have that satisfaction at least.

"Still I drew nearer to the house, so near that I could hear people calling to each other. Once I thought--for now I was quite close--that I could hear the wailing of the negro women-servants--I saw a half-breed dash past me on a mustang, riding as for dear life, and I knew, I divined as surely as if I had been told, that he was gone for the doctor, that she was dying--or was dead. Your father's chance was past."

"Heaven help him!" said Julian Ritherdon. "Heaven help him. It was an awful revenge, taken at an awful moment. Well! You succeeded?"

"Yes, I succeeded. She was dead--I saw that when, an hour later, I crept into the room, and when I took you from out of the arms of the sleeping negro nurse--when, God forgive me, I stole you!"

 

 

 

 

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