Mr.

"Benjamin
deeper into the wood. There was now the wild desire to escape from her
rescuer and to fly back to the kindly jailers on the hill. "A poor priest, by the grace
of God," he said, and she heard him chuckle. "Take me back to the road, sir!" she
commanded, "I will take you to your mother," he said, "and to no one else." "But I
am afraid of you," she exclaimed, her courage going. "I don't know you--I don't
know where you are taking me." "We will not go far to-night. I know a place
where you can hide until I secure help from the city." "But you said you had a
wagon." "The horse must have strayed away, worse luck!" said he, with a
raucous laugh. She broke from his grasp suddenly, and like a frightened deer
was off through the darkness knowing not whether she went or what moment she
might crash against a tree. The fight was a short one. She heard him curse
savagely as he leaped upon her from behind after a chase of a few rods, and
then she swooned dead away. When she regained consciousness a faint glow of
light met her eyes as the lids feebly lifted themselves from their torpor. Gradually
there came to her nostrils a dank, musty odor and then the smell of tobacco
smoke. She was lying on her back, and her eyes at last began to take in broad
rafters and cobwebby timbers not far above her head. The light was so dim that
shadows and not real objects seemed to constitute the surroundings. Then there
grew the certainty that she was not alone in this dismal place. Turning her head
slightly that she was able, with some effort, to distinguish the figure of a man seated
on the opposite side of the low, square room, his back against the wall, his legs
outstretched. At his elbow, on a box, burned a candle, flickering and feeble in its
worthlessness. He was smoking a pipe, and there was about him an air of
contentment and security. Slowly past events crowded themselves into the path
of memory, and her bran took them up as if they were parts of a dream. For
many minutes she was perfectly quiet, dumbly contemplating the stranger who sat
guard over her in that wretched place. In her mind there was quickly developed,
as one brings the picture from the film of a negative the truth of the situation. She
had escaped from one set of captors only to give herself into the clutches of
others a thousand times more detestable, infinitely more evil-hearted. "You've
come back to life, have you?" She started violently and shivered as with a mighty