"And then, the body itself," pursued Haidee. "It would have the look of one lately dead. How could we account to her friends for that? Remember, she is supposed to be dead these five months."

"Haidee, you are an old fool! You are getting into your dotage--what silly questions you ask, to be sure," panted the old man, in a furious rage with his hesitating wife.

"Oh, yes, I hear all that. But you have not answered my question yet,"

returned she, pertinaciously.

"I have answered it twenty times before--every time that we talked the matter over. We can say that we had it embalmed so that her friends might make sure of her ident.i.ty when we claimed the ransom."

The old witch sat silently pondering a few minutes.

"Perhaps that would do," she said, rousing herself at last. "It may be that I am over cautious; I confess that I wish the girl dead."

"You consent then?" said Peter eagerly.

"Yes, I consent," she answered, with a ring of fierce joy in her unwomanly tones.

"Now that's my sensible wife," said Peter, transported with joy. "I thought you would come to your senses after a while. Well, since you _are_ willing I say the sooner the better."

"Yes, the sooner the better," his wife repeated after him.

"Let it be to-night then," suggested Peter, who did not want to give Haidee's cautious fears any time to change her resolution. He believed in the old adage: "Strike while the iron is hot."

"Yes," answered Haidee readily, "let it be to-night."

The listener's heart gave a great fluttering bound and then sank like lead in her bosom.

Through all that she had suffered the desire of life, and the hope of ultimate release had remained strong in her breast. How could it be otherwise with one so young and lovely, and for whom life held so much?

Now all her hopes were blighted in the dreadful knowledge just come upon her. Death in the horrible form of murder was about to blot out her young and tender life forever from the earth. She clasped her hands together, and repressing a strong desire to shriek aloud, lest that cry of anguish should precipitate her fate, listened on.

"Who will do the deed?" asked Peter, who was a coward in spite of his braggadocio.

"I will!" said Haidee, fiercely. "I will get my revenge upon her thus.

Presently, when she is asleep and dreaming perhaps of her home and her lover, I will steal in upon her and clasp my hands around her white little neck and strangle her to death."

"It is settled, then," said old Peter, with a fiendish chuckle of delight. "Get our pipes, now, Haidee, and let us sit up and wait till the time comes."

Lily Lawrence dropped down upon the floor and lay there like one already smitten with death.

"Oh, G.o.d!" she thought, "if I only had not listened I might indeed have been asleep, and death might have stolen on me unconsciously. How dreadful to lie here and wait for death each moment."

She lay there shuddering and trying to pray as the fatal minutes crept on, each one bearing away on its swift sands the brief span of precious life yet left her.

At each movement in the next room she shivered and started, thinking that old Haidee was about to come forth to execute her murderous task.

How long she lay there weeping and praying she never knew, but at length she heard the clock in the lower hall strike ten.

The next instant stealthy steps came gliding through the hall to her door.

Already she seemed to feel the horrible clutch of old Haidee's hands about her warm, white throat, pressing out the life.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Oh, G.o.d spare me!" breathed Lily, clasping her hands in agony as she heard the key grate in the lock, and the hand of the murderess turning the k.n.o.b of the door.

At that instant, before the door opened, while but a moment intervened between Lily and a horrible death, a loud and hurried knocking was distinctly heard down-stairs. It was so startling, coming upon the previous utter stillness, that old Haidee darted back to her own room in a fright, and directly she and her husband were heard making a shuffling descent of the stairs. Lily arose upon her feet in a tumult of hope.

"Who can it be?" she murmured. "Can it be possible that rescue is at hand?"

The revulsion from despair and terror to instant hope was too great to be borne.

Her slight form wavered an instant, then unconsciousness stole upon her and she fell prostrate on the floor.

In the meantime the old couple down-stairs, after removing bolts and bars, admitted, to their astonishment and dismay, the two conspirators, Pratt and Colville.

"You were not expecting me, eh?" said Doctor Pratt, with a laugh at Haidee's astonished look as she blinked at him beneath the flaring candle she held aloft. "Well, that cursed hound of yours was not expecting me either. He had nearly taken a piece out of my throat before he recognized my voice and became pacific. I had thought he must have known me at once. Look you, I shall put a bullet in his head some day, the blood-thirsty brute!"

"If you do, you will destroy the best safeguard you have against the escape of your prisoner," said Haidee, shortly.

"Ah! well, let him live a little longer then, but you must teach him not to forget his old friends," was the careless reply.

"You come late, doctor. We did not expect you, and were about retiring,"

said old Peter.

"Yes, we thought it better to come by stealth," said Pratt, shortly.

"The fact is, Colville has taken it in his head that we are watched by some fellow, and it suits us to be wary just now. We wish to see Miss Lawrence at once. Is she safe and well?"

"As safe and well as usual. Starvation does not seem to agree with her very well," answered Haidee, leading the way up-stairs with her flaring candle.

"It will break her proud spirit all the sooner," said Colville, brutally, as he followed them.

Haidee stepped into the hall, opened Lily's door and entered, nearly falling over the prostrate form of the girl. She started back in dismay.

"Why, what--the devil!" cried Pratt, entering behind her. "What has happened to the girl? Is she dead?"

He knelt down, felt the pulse, and laid his ear over the heart as Colville and Peter entered after him.

"She is in a faint," he said, looking up into Colville's frightened face. "Our arrival was most opportune. Haidee, bring wine or whatever stimulants you have in the house. Her vitality is exhausted. The late regimen has been too severe for her weak const.i.tution, perhaps."

He straightened the still form out upon the floor and applied a vial of pungent smelling salts to her nostrils. In a moment life came fluttering back, and Lily's languid gaze opened upon the faces of her enemies. The white lids closed again and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her lips.

Doctor Pratt lifted the light form in his arms and laid her upon the bed as Haidee entered, carrying a gla.s.s of wine. He took it from her hand and held it to the lips of his patient.

"Drink this, Miss Lawrence," he said, "you are weak and faint; it will revive you."