"Isn't she pretty?" Then he quietly closed the door, replaced the lamp on the shelf, turned down his coat collar and said in a low, pleased voice: "Well, old boy, our troubles are nearly over. Virginia will come tonight." "Alone?" queried Jack, in low tones, and he looked significantly at his colleague. "Yes, and with the ducats! I caused her to be secretly informed that she must meet you here by twelve o'clock this night, and prepared to pay the ransom. Any liquor handy, Jack? I'm feeling a bit nervous after that pull. The boat sogged along as heavy as though a bunch of weeds trailed across her prow." Jack smiled, but proceeded to the cupboard and produced a bottle, together with a glass. Removing the cork, he offered both bottle and glass to Rutley with the remark: "Old Kaintuck--dead shot! The best ever. Help yourself!" "That's an affectionate beauty spot about your right eye, Jack," remarked Rutley, taking the bottle and tumbler from him. "You haven't told me how it happened." "I was out on Corbett street when that damned Irish coachman of Thorpe's sauntered along as though he had a chip on his shoulder, and he had the nerve to ask me if I had seen the child." "Do you think he suspected you?" queried Rutley, pausing with the glass and bottle in his hands. "No; it was a random shot. But it made me hot, and--well, the long and the short of it was the doctor worked over me an hour before I was able to walk." "I see," commented Rutley, pouring some liquor into the glass and setting the bottle on the table. "A sudden and unexpected attack, eh! May the fickle jade smile on us tonight," and so saying, he drank the liquor with evident relish, and handed the glass to Jack. Jack, misunderstanding his quotation of the "fickle jade," interpreting it as meant for Virginia, at once replied: "The jade may smile and smile, and be a villain, but she must 'pungle' up the 'dough.'" And pouring some liquor in the glass he drained it. Jack's misapplication of the popular quotation caused Phil to smile, then to chuckle. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, the jade!" Then he produced a couple of cigars from his vest pocket, and offering one to Jack, continued: "She deserves no mercy." "None whatever," replied Jack, as he took the cigar. "If she had not weakened, we should never have selected her to pay the ransom," resumed Rutley. "Ha, ha, ha, ha," laughed Jack, as he put a match to the cigar. "Her penitent mood makes her an easy mark. The price of her atonement'll be twenty thousand dollars." Again Rutley chuckled, chuckled convivially, for evidently the softening influence of the liquor relaxed his tensely attuned nerves. "Ha, my boy, she shall not enjoy the bliss of restoring the child to her mother. I shall be the hero in this case," and he lowered his voice. "After Virginia has paid the ransom, I shall take the child to her father." Then he looked at Jack significantly and laughed--laughed in a singularly sinister, yet highly pitched suppressed key.