“We remain here for several hours. If all goes well, you will then be at liberty to depart for your home in the city. Here is a chair, Madam. Pray be seated. Pardon our inability to give you a light. You will be patient, I am sure, when it is said on the sacred word of a gentleman that no harm is to come to you. It is only necessary that you remain quiet and await the hour when we are ready to release you. I must ask permission to lock the door of this room. Before dawn your friends will be here to take you away in safety. Everything has been arranged for your personal welfare and comfort. Permit me to say goodnight.” “Where are we?” demanded the old man. “Why have you brought us here?” asked Mrs. Garrison from the arm chair into which she had limply fallen. “You will learn everything in good time. We shall be just outside the door, and will respond promptly if you need our help to the extent of shouting for it. In the meantime your horses and carriage are being well cared for. Be of good heart and your night will not be a long one. Believe me, I hope we may meet again under more pleasing conditions.” The door closed a second later and the key clicked. Then came the shooting of a bolt, a short scuffling of feet, and the silence of the dead reigned over the strange house. Overcome with dread, the occupants of the room uttered no word, no sound for what seemed to them an hour. Then Mrs. Garrison, real tenderness in her voice, called softly to her daughter. “Darling, can you find me in this darkness? Come to me. Let me hold you close in my arms, Dorothy, poor, poor child.” But there was no response to the appeal, nor to a second and a third call. The mother sprang to her feet in sudden terror, her heart fluttering wildly. “Henry! Are you here? Where is--what has happened to Dorothy?” she cried. A trembling old man and a frantic woman bumped against each other in the darkness and the search began. There were but two people in the room! Following this alarming discovery one of these persons swooned and the other battered, like a madman, against the heavy, stubborn door. Far away in the night bowled a carriage drawn by sturdy horses. The clouds broke and the rain fell. Thunder and lightning ran rampant in the skies, but nothing served to lessen the speed of that swift flight over the highways leading into the sleep-ridden country. Inside the cab, not the one in which Dorothy Garrison had begun her journey to the altar, but another and less pretentious, sat the grim desperado and a half-dead woman. Whither they flew no one knew save the man who held the reins over the plunging horses. How long their journey--well, it was to have an end.