I HAVE always loved pine trees since that desperate afternoon, for the very practical reason that the needles prevent the growth of underbrush. My skirts were left free, and my feet had their full opportunity for speed, and I needed every ounce of strength and breath. Before I came to the top of the last steep slope that plunged down to the stream, I heard a hoarse, choking cry, that terrible cry for “Help! Help! Help!” It was a man's voice, but so thick and weak and hollow that I could not recognize it for Paul Dabney's. I did not dare to answer it, such was my dread of being stopped by some murderess lurking in the gnarled and stunted trees. But I fairly hurled myself down the path. There was the bridge. I saw that a great gap yawned in the middle of it. I hurried to the edge. Down below me in the gray, rotten-smelling shadows floated a desperate, white face. Paul Dabney's straining eyes under his mud-streaked hair looked up at me, and the faint hope in them went out.

“You again!” he gasped painfully. “You've come back to see the end...” He smiled a twisted, ironical smile. “If I could get my hand out of this infernal grave I'd let you wrap some of that hair of yours around my fingers. That's your trade-mark, is n't it? Did you come back for that?” He sank an inch lower, his chin had gone under. He lifted it out, bearded with filthy mud, and leaned back as though against a pillow, closing his eyes. He had given up hope.

All this, of course, took but a moment of time. I had been looking about, searching the place for help. Near the edge of the horrible, sluggish stream lay a board, left there by Henry after his devilish work, or, else, fallen when Paul Dabney had broken through. It lay on the farther bank. I stood up, measured the distance of the break in the bridge, and, going back a few paces, ran and jumped across. It was a good jump. I hardly looked to see, however, but hurried down the opposite bank and shoved out the board towards Paul Dabney. Only his face now glimmered like a death-mask on the surface of the mud.

“Paul,” I cried desperately, urgently, commandingly, “pull out your arm. I have come to save you.”

His eyes opened. He stared at me. Then life seemed to come back to his face. He made a frantic, choking, gasping struggle; once he went altogether down; then, with a sucking sound his arm came up, the fingers closed on my board. I caught his poor, cold, slimy hand. I pulled with all my strength. His grip was like a convulsion. Inch by inch I dragged him towards the bank. The stream surrendered its victim with a sort of sticky sob, and he lay there on the ground beside me, lifeless as a log, hardly to be recognized as a human being, so daubed and drenched was he with the black ooze that had so nearly been his death. My attempts to restore him were soon successful, for it was exhaustion, not suffocation, that had made him faint. He had taken very little of the mud into his mouth, but, struggling there in the bottomless, horrible slough for nearly half an hour had taxed his strength to the last gasp.

He opened his eyes and looked up at me with an expression of grave astonishment. I knew that he had not expected me to be such a serious criminal as to make this deliberate attempt on his life, and, yet, I was sure as his large, gray eyes searched me that he was deliberating the possibility. He sat up presently, and, taking my handkerchief, he wiped off his face and hair and hands.

“The rest is hopeless,” he said.

“The other man?” I asked him shudderingly, my eyes fixed on the smooth and oily water.

He looked at me with a puzzled face. “The other man! There was not any other man...” Then, stilt looking at me, a faint, unwilling flush stole up his cheek.

“Miss Gale,” he said, “you are without doubt my guardian angel. And yet, strangely enough, I had a dreadful vision of what you might be as another kind of angel. When I was going down,”—he shivered all over and glanced at the stream, whose surface was now as smooth as it would have been had he sunk beneath it,—“when I was going down, and at the last of my strength,—I was delirious, I suppose,—but I had a sort of vision. I thought you stood there on the bank above me, and looked down with your narrow face between its two wings of red hair, and mocked me. Just as I was settling down to death, you disappeared. And, just a few moments later, there you were again, this time with the aura of a saint... Miss Gale,”—and here he looked at me with entire seriousness, dropping his tone of mockery,—“do you believe in dual personalities?”

“Really, Mr. Dabney,” I said, “I don't think it's a very good time to take up the subject.”

He looked away from me, and spoke low with an air of confusion. “You called me 'Paul' when you shoved out that blessed board, which has gone down in my place...”

I paid no attention to this remark, but stood up. Silently he, too, rose and we laid a log across the deadly opening of the bridge and balanced carefully back to safety. I could not think of my leap of a few minutes before without a feeling of deathly sickness.

“You risked your life,” murmured Paul Dabney; “you risked your life to save me...” He stopped me as we climbed up the hill. It was very dark there amongst the trees. He took me by the wrists, and, “Janice Gale,” he said desperately, speaking through his teeth, “look up at me, for the love of God.”

I did look up, and he plunged his eyes into mine as though he were diving for a soul.

I put up no barriers between my heart and his searching eyes. It was so dusky there that he could not read any of my secrets. I let him search till at last he sighed from the bottom of his soul, and let my hands fall, passing his own across his forehead with a pitiful air of confusion and defeat.

“'La belle dame sans merci has thee in thrall,'” he murmured, and we went up into the glimmering twilight of the open spaces where the swallows were still wheeling high in search of the falling sun.

When we reached the house, I asked Paul Dabney timidly if he did not think it best to change and not to alarm Mrs. Brane by any sight of his condition. He agreed with a wry sort of smile, and went slowly up the stairs. I saw that he held tight to the railing, and that his feet dragged. He was very near, indeed, to collapse; the walk up the hill had been almost too much for him.

Nevertheless, he appeared at dinner-time as trim and neat as possible, with the air of demure boyishness, which was so disarming, completely restored.

Not only was he neat and trim in person, but he was mentally alert and gay. He ate hardly anything, to be sure, drank not at all, and sat, tight-strung, leaning a little forward in his chair, his hand in his pocket, as he laughed and talked. His eyes held, beneath bright, innocent surfaces, rather a harried, hunted look. But he was very entertaining, so much so that his pallor, the little choking cough that bothered him, and my own condition of limp reaction to the desperate excitement of the afternoon, passed entirely unnoticed by Mrs. Brane. Her better spirits of the morning had returned in force. She was very glad to see Paul Dabney, so glad that I suffered a twinge of heart.

“Oh,” she laughed, “but it's good to have a man in the house. Shakespeare is right, you know, when he says, 'a woman naturally born to fears.'”

“I don't think he was right at all,” Paul Dabney took her up. “I believe that the man is naturally the more fearful animal. Shakespeare ought to have said, 'a woman naturally feigning fear.' I'm with the modern poet, 'the female of the species is more deadly than the male.' Take the lady spider, for instance.”

“What does the lady spider do?” asked Mrs. Brane.

“She devours her lover while she is still in his embrace.”

“How horrible!”

“Horrible, but the creature is a very faithful and devoted mother. I think there are many women”—here his hunted and haggard look rested upon me—“who would be glad to rid themselves of a lover when his—particular—usefulness is over.”

“All women kill the thing they love,” I smiled, and I had a dreadful feeling that my smile was like the cruel and thin-lipped smile of the woman who had planned Paul Dabney's death.

That was one of the most terrifying consequences of the nervous shock I had suffered, that I had quite often now this obsession, as though the vixen were using me, obsessing my body with her blackened soul, as though gradually I were becoming her instrument. The smile left my shaken lips, and I saw a sort of reflection of it draw Dabney's mouth stiffly across his teeth. His pallor deepened; he looked away and began to crumble his bread with restless fingers.

Henry passed through, and we followed him into the drawing-room, where coffee was always served. When Paul Dabney had first come into the dining-room I had glanced shrewdly at Henry. The jaw behind the whiskers had dropped, the eyes had blinked, then discretion was perfectly restored. But I felt a threatening sort of gloom emanate from the man towards me, and I realized that my position was doubly dangerous. There was a spirit of mutiny in my supposed accomplices. I trusted my double, however, to control the pair. Their fear of her was doubtless greater than their dread of detection, and Henry probably was relieved of some portion of his fears by the non-appearance of the Hovey, whom Sara had so befouled with epithets, and whom she evidently so greatly feared.

Mrs. Brane excused herself early, and I, too, rose shortly after she had left the room. I moved slowly towards the door. Paul Dabney stood by the high mantel, one hand in his pocket, the other resting on the shelf, his head a little bent, looking somberly at me from under his handsome brows. He looked very slim and young. The thought of his loneliness, of his danger, so much greater than he suspected, smote my heart. I wanted to go back and tell him everything, even my love. I was hesitating, ready to turn, when he spoke. The voice, sharp and stinging as a lash, fell with a bite across my heart.

“Good-night, sleep-walker,” he said.

My hand flew to my breast because of the pain he caused me. He watched me narrowly. His pale face was rigid with the guard he kept upon some violent feeling. My hurt turned to anger.

“You suspect me of sinister things, Paul Dabney,” I said hotly; “you think that I prowl about Mrs. Brane's house while she sleeps, in search of something valuable, perhaps.” I laughed softly. “Perhaps you are right. I give you leave to pursue your investigations, though I can't say I consider you a very ingenious detective.”

He started, and the color came in a wave across his face. For some reason the slight upon his amateur detecting seemed to sting. I was glad. I would have liked to strike him, to cause him physical pain. I came in a sort of rush straight over to him, and he drew warily back till he stood against the wall, his eyes narrowed upon me, his head bent, as I have seen the eyes and heads of men about to strike.

“Listen to me,” I said; “I give you fair warning. This afternoon I saved your life at the risk of my own. I may not be able to do that again. I advise,”—here I threw all the contempt possible into my voice,—“I advise you to keep out of this, to stay in your room and lock your door at night. Don't smile. It is a very serious warning. Good-night, dreamer, and—lover without faith.”

At this he put his hand to his eyes, and I left him standing with this gesture of ashamed defeat.

It was a night of full and splendid moon; my room was as white as the calyx of a lily, so white that its very radiance made sleep impossible. Besides, I was excited by my battle with Paul Dabney, and by the thought of that paper in my dress. God willing, now, the struggle would soon be over. If I lived through the next twenty-four hours, I would find the treasure, capture the thieves, confront Paul Dabney with my innocence and my achievement, and leave “The Pines” forever. My ordeal was not so nearly over as I hoped. There were further tangles in the female spider's web. It makes me laugh now and blush to think how, all the while, the creature made her use of me, how the cat let the little mouse run hither and thither in its futile activity; no, not altogether futile, I did play an extraordinary rÔle. I did that very afternoon save Paul Dabney's life; I did bewilder the queen spider and disturb and tear her web, but, when all is said and done, it was she who was mistress of “The Pines” that night.

I did not light my gas, so splendid was the moon, but crouching near my open window on the floor, I took out the paper and spread it open on my knee. It was covered with close lines in the Russian script. The writing was so fine and delicate that, to read it, I should need a stronger light. I rose, drew my shade and lit the gas. Again I spread out the paper, then gave a little exclamation of dismay. It was the Russian script, perfectly legible to me, but, alas! the language was not that of modern Russian speech. It was the old Slavonic language of the Church. The paper was as much a mystery to me as though it were still hidden in the bookcase.