as it were, among your friends; and I sent her-oh, under surveillance!-to a little hotel up the river here, kept by old retainers of your family, where you would be sure to be recognized. Thence she sent you her piteous capitulation and cry for help. You, of course, responded in a panic that you couldn't meet her there until she was properly restored to the public gaze, free of scandal. But you were only too eager to meet her somewhere; she refused to return to New York, and you suggested this place. Its situation filled both her and me with hope that it was the very place we sought, particularly when your yacht crept up stream and dropped anchor at its foot. Thus a brave lady came to her battle, and the law as usual a little lagging-followed her."

"Stop!" cried Christina. "There's something wrong! Look at him-he's grinning!"

The detectives had returned with news of an amateur printing establishment in the basement; but Kane, too, looked curiously past them to Ten Euyck's writhing smile. And now Ten Euyck spoke again:

"I congratulate you, Kane, and the young lady. You have taken admirable. measures. But they did not extend far enough. They did not take in the Ingham household." He had scored his first point. He had all their attentions, now. "Mine did. Nor did I leave this valuable document quite without a record. To-day I put into the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Ingham still another sealed envelope, containing a complete account of Allegra's dealings with their son. I had two of my men sign it after me. I need hardly say that, save as the discoverer of her guilt, it does not mention me. Unless I reclaim it in person tomorrow morning they will break the seal and read my charge. Do you think they will not follow it up?"

Christina turned with a shrill cry to Kane. He met her only with a grim regret. The labored taunt had died miserably from Ten Euyck's voice; and the threatening, pleading hopelessness of his eyes, too, hung on Kane's face. Then, because he read no change there and no mercy there, he turned again upon Christina:

"Can you move him? Can you? He promised you your sister's safety. He can't give it to you if he takes mine. I told you I had something to tell you. So far as the Arm of Justice goes, she was my partner

"You're

my senior partner. It was her game!" Christina swayed as she stood. lying-lying! I don't believe you"Yes, you do. So does Kane. Look at him-he knows! His instinct cries out that it's true. That's how we met. It was her business. Those were her ruffians. She wrote the letters that I ordered. I took their miserable little rag, hounding the poor for money, and made it an arm of Justice indeed I never touched a really respectable person! But your sister, Christina, your own sister-your own good name-" "You can't help me?" Christina said to Kane.

He shook his head. Then the sound of a woman's scream rang through the outside dark.

As quickly as, on that night in August, a shot had followed the woman's shadow, another and another shot now followed that scream. The sheriff and two of his men ran down the terrace, and as Herrick caught Christina back from following them a man plunged out of the shadows and rushed through the front door into the house.

The next moment he stood facing them above the yellow valance of Herrick's little balcony; his pistol still smoked in his hand. He looked wildly all around, as if the number of people bewildered him, called out something in Italian about searching for a spy, and then at sight of Herrick the most fearful hate and terror gathered in his face.

Herrick had scarcely recognized him for the little soft Italian who had wept that afternoon at the restaurant, when he lifted his gun and, with a scream of raging panic, fired straight for Herrick's heart. His deflected bullet harmlessly plowed up the floor, for, in the very instant that he pulled the trigger, Nicola Pascoe stepped in through one of the terrace windows and shot him dead.

"You!" Christina cried. "Where's my sister?"

Ten Euyck jumped at him with an oath. "Silence! Be silent!"

Nicola said to Kane, jerking his head at the limp figure that swung down across the balcony rail: "He murder his wife!"

"Oh, Heaven!" said Christina. "That scream out there! His wife? Do you mean my sister?"

Nicola, thrusting back a great sob of pride and grief, looked at her, past the grasp of the detectives, with a grin of pride and

hate. "You fool of hers!" he jeered. "Fool of us all! You think you ever have a sister like that?"

Ten Euyck groaned, and his head fell forward on his breast.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE SHADOW'S FLIGHT

Parts of Allegra's story were never given to the world. But shortly before their marriage Herrick and Christina, at the house of the district attorney, read the full version to the end:

This is the confession of me, Allegra Pascoe Alieni, as to James Ingham's death. I write the facts for Inspector Ten Euyck, to keep his protection; but I write them in my own way or not at all. It is a good story, being about me, and, if he outlives me, may it escape him and avenge me!

I am a remarkable girl. It has taken to crush me the same as to crush Napoleonbad luck. My bad luck began when I was born, with the two colors of my eyes. Thus a mark was put upon me, keeping me always in holes and corners unless I would be known.

If it had not been for the blue eye and the brown, my mother never would have noticed, among the children in the park, the American baby with the fair down upon its head who, when she came to look at it, was made with a face shaped like mine and who also had a brown eye and a blue. She would never have made friends with the nurse and learned what the nurse had picked up, not being supposed to speak English; how the child was named Allegra Hope, and how when it was born the rich Americans had been but four months wed, and were to wait in Italy till it could be brought home a year younger than it was.

And then came the telegram to come home; somebody was dying. At the same time the nurse was sick, and there was no one with whom to leave the child. So then the nurse brings forth her friend who has always showed so fond of the child. And there is rejoicing because she is American, and the English doctor says she is healthy, and the child is left with her.

It is treated well; it grows; it grows more and more like me, who am but one year the elder, so that all laugh to see us. And I am

more like that other mother than my own, showing in what class it would have been just I should have been born. And the old creature in America does not die, but hangs and hangs. Money is sent always for the baby, and by and by, when it is three years old, it catches the fever and it dies.

The English doctor is to write to the parents, but he does not write he does an injury to one of the great clan of the Camorra, and he writes no more, and the money is sent and spent on me, and the truth is never told.

But they there in America, thinking to be gone but a month at most, never said there was a daughter, so they know not how, now, one is to be produced.

So that when I am seven years old come the Hopes. The mother I do not like, and she does not like me. She is a fool, and in America she has, too, another child. It is a girl and it is said to be pretty; but the picture she carries with her shows a pale, shapeless child with dull hair-not like mine that burns men's hearts like fire!

Moreover, this child has things that I should have, more money, more fuss. I am proud to be what I am; my mother, who is scarcely more than a common servant, had the great luck to marry into the Camorra, and my brother Nicola at eighteen takes the oath, so I am not come alone from dull peasants and cackling Yankees, but from free men, born to judge, born to strike, born to live wild and to satisfy their blood. But all the same, as to brat, Christina, I am the elder sister and I should have all, all!

When I am fifteen, and of the right age for passion and to break men's hearts, my bad luck comes and breaks my own. It could not leave me with the poor to be like the poor; it raised me up so that my nose sniffed at sight of them, and then it brought me together with Alonzo Pasquale, the son of a millionaire. I ran away from school with him and we would have been happy forever, he having so much to give me, but that he grew weary of my blue eye and my brown. He told me so, for he was a dog and a devil, and I took little Filippi Alieni, and married him! It was as well to be married, and he was a gentleman, with money. All was done as a wise girl should do; and yet see how my luck pursued me!

His people cast him off, on my account, and Nicola, who has been the best of brothers to me, got him into the Camorra, where

his gentlemanly manners would make him able to get, first, confidence, and then money, from the best.

Yet when I had been but three months married and was not yet sixteen, he gets himself caught. And in prison he tells, he betrays his comrades, so that he is released; and for this Nicola does not kill him. No, he keeps the secret of that disgrace, and ships us to America, where I am to introduce my husband to the Hopes.

One of those to whom he had confessed loses his place, and then, by blackmail, that he will give my husband's treachery to the Camorra, he gets from him all the money that he now has. So that I have to lose him quickly; to take the little, ah, so little! there is left, and slip away. I do not wish a Camorra knife in my back.

I am afraid to go to the Hopes, for there he will follow me, and he is a sniveling thing to make a fuss and spoil all. So I ask for work to teach Italian. And so I meet with the great Jim.

Hail and farewell, my poor Jim! You cared too much! I would have been glad to marry you, as you made me so weary begging of me. I was very happy with you, and I think you loved me better than any one. But you were very silly to leave me when you found me out, when that little whimpering puppy came.

And then the Hopes lost their money and I wrote to them no more. Because of her sick conscience, Mrs. Hope was always trying, in sly ways, to find where I was. And it seems when her child was come to fourteen years, it chanced upon my old letters and learned all. Heavens, what a row it raised! And some letters forwarded to me that they had tried sending me to Italy were all about how she cried for me. "Bene!" I thought, "she sounds like a tiresome little minx; but at least it is a thing to know!"

So that by and by-when Filippi is clumsy in getting money from Italian families and goes to jail for four years, and they dare to put me there for two-when I come out I go to my sentimental miss, who is now more than sixteen and makes already a little money. Not a dollar has she made since but I have had the half of it.

As soon as ever I see her I know the thing to tell her is that I have been in prison for stealing. I do not tell her I am innocentI tell her I was starving! I tell her about

Ingham, but not his name, and with all the blame for him; and how he will not marry me because I am without money or place, and leaves me, when I am eighteen, without a dollar and without a name. All, all, because society had kept me from my place in life.

Eh, me, you should have seen her! She used herself like a maid to me, and a mother and a little lover, all in one! And I might have done very well with her but for my bad luck. Nicola has a misfortune and comes to this country with Mother Pascoe and wishes me to work with him in the Camorra. Oh, how could I guess that would be a mistake-how could I guess the growing brat will grow so far and high? I am glad enough to make a little butter to my bread.

But who would think that all the while this monkey-girl was looking in the glass of my grace to steal and steal and steal from me? And would steal once too often, for the moving-picture show! That was, indeed, the justice of the gods!

All this time I have made Christina keep me secret. I have the brown and the blue eye, to be noticed everywhere, and I do not want the police upon my hands-nor yet Filippi! So I say I am too sensitive and proud to face a person in this world except my little sister! Only I want the poor, good folk who brought me up. So when she is eighteen she begins to buy for me this farm, and here she welcomes my mother and Nicola.

Nicola has joined with friends who have long run among people of our nation in New York a business called the Arm of Justice, and on the farm we live in innocence and peace, and conduct that business excellently. And here comes at last the sick puppy, Filippi, not to be kept off, who can but sit quiet and lick his paws in the background, that Christina shall not know of him.

And then, it is the first year of Ten Euyck being coroner, and a man who has been paying us dies. And Ten Euyck, nosing, nosing, comes upon our trail. And he sees how we have had nothing to do with the death, only the man had no more to pay and so he killed himself. And Ten Euyck sends for me, and tells me he is sorry for me and he will not inform against me. He tells me of a young girl he knows in the highest of society, for whom a friend of his had so

great a fancy he was almost ready to marry her, and I knew he was that friend. And the girl dare not but lead him on, but all the time she prefers some one else and is in trouble; and he tells me all he has found out, and he says: "I would not tell this to you if I did not think you grateful to me, and too discreet to use it otherwise than as I wish, when you know liberty is in my hand!" So I know what I am to do, and the girl goes mad. And he pays me by and by, but not enough.

We are going mad, too, for money, for our bad luck is always there! That man who made Filippi pay has found us out, and exacts of us more and more. We are in terror of the Camorra, and of Ten Euyck, who has let none see him but me. He comes always to the farm like a caller, when I have sent all away but me; he will put nothing in writing; and he drives his own machine.

Then Christina engages herself to Ingham! Was it not enough to break the heart! What use is it to work, to struggle, to be beautiful, and to have nothing? And here is this silly girl, not worth my little finger, who has all!

Three times more I work for Ten Euyck. And one day he is raging against Ingham and Christina, and what he would give to know against them any more than Ingham's dissipation, and I think: "Maybe I can make something out of this!"

By and by I rejoice to hear that she has trouble with Jim Ingham. He is not the boy I found him. He has let himself go wild so long he can not tame himself all at once, and then he is exacting, like a fiend, and jealous and suspicious, not believing in himself, nor anything, nor anybody; and I laugh to myself, if she should know why! Ah, even had I not always the memory of him, it would enrage me that that chit should marry him! For now my womanhood is at its height, and [surely he would find me fair again-save for Filippi!

I think, at last, what a fool I am not to have divorced Filippi long ago! I wonder how much Filippi will take to set me free, and he makes a horrible fuss and will take

nothing at all! But this spy is begun all fresh, killing him by inches with demands for five thousand dollars. And he asks also five thousand now, not to report Nicola, who has remained silent and a friend to us! It is all like a mad spider's web which but entangles more and more. And I think I

will get that ten thousand from Ingham because I do not publish the story I have told Christina. Or else from Ten Euyck, because I do.

I send the Arm of Justice letter to Ingham's office that it may be forwarded to Europe. And then I hear from Christina that she cares for him no longer and has written him, and already he is coming back to argue with her. Oh, my luck, my bad luck! If he has lost her already, he will fight my lies! He will connect my letter with her broken promise-for he will know, despite the lies, that the girl there told about is I--and he will ask her if she knows a girl with a brown eye and a blue, and what may he not guess and put into her head about my business? I am in despair, but I think I will get ahead of him, so she will not listen to him. I say to her:

"That man who ruins my life years age, that was James Ingham! I could not let it go on, dear sister. But don't let him know where I am."

He comes straight to her, before he has my letter, and all she says to him is: "You have never known all these years that I had a sister." And then she tells him her sister's name, and he goes away.

But Nicola ever hopes that perhaps he will pay, and at four o'clock watches his window for my ribbon. Then he sees go in my friend Filippi, and he thinks that very queer. Oh, that Filippi! He wants Ingham should marry Christina! And, the mad creature, he tells Ingham: "If Allegra makes trouble for you, say to her just these words, 'What do you know of the Arm of Justice?'" And Ingham had got my Arm of Justice letter. And he guesses what I have told Christina.

So he gives Filippi word for me: "Will you tell Christina the truth or shall I?” And to Christina he sends word: "If you will have a talk with your sister to-morrow morning, I think you will find she has news for you."

It seems to me that any person of a pitiful heart must be sorry for me now. Here am I, born for love and to command and charm, having always planned so wisely and dared so well, tied to Filippi and to lowly life, the spite of Ingham on my heels and tattlers on all sides, just when I need all my wit to win my love back!

I must see him at once and beg him to be merciful to me. And, indeed, he has loved