Jewel could not repress a low cry of horror. She was only a girl, and wicked as she was, she was frightened when she saw that life had fled from the body of her she had so cruelly tortured. She felt Flower's hands and they were deadly cold; she shouted in her ear and she did not respond. Then running into her own room, she brought out a pitcher of fresh water, which she poured over Flower's head and face in a perfect deluge. But not a sigh, not the movement of an eyelash rewarded her efforts at resuscitation. With something like awe she began to realize that her work was completed sooner than she had expected. Flower was already dead. She flung wide the door and began to scream loudly for the servants. Her voice rang wildly down the long halls and dim stairways, returning to her in ghostly echoes; but no one answered to her wild calls. The servants had stolen away to a merry-making in the town. Something of the truth began to dawn upon her mind when she had shouted herself hoarse. "They are either stolen away or fast asleep," she muttered, and rushed down-stairs to their quarters in the yard. The cottage door was locked, and Jewel pounded lustily without receiving any reply. Looking at the windows, she saw that they were closed and dark. "The wretches! how dared they go away and leave me with that dead girl?" she muttered, ignoring the fact that Flower had been alive a little while ago. The deep, hoarse baying of the watch-dog, aroused in his distant kennel by the noise she had made, caused her to start and crouch down shivering on the back door-step. "I shall stay here till they come. I--I--can not watch by that dead girl alone!" she muttered, with a superstitious horror of death. * * * * * But in the meantime the copious shower of water she had poured over Flower had taken effect. While Jewel was battering at the door of the servants' quarters Flower had revived and found the door wide open, and such a draught of sweet, pure air rushing into the room that it seemed to endow her with new life. She dragged herself wearily into the hall and heard Jewel's angry voice berating the servants down in the yard. She instantly suspected the true state of the case. "She thinks I am dead, and wishes to arouse the servants. I must try to escape before she returns," she moaned, faintly, and made her way down-stairs like a spirit, slipped the bolt of the front door, and let herself out, friendless and homeless, into the dark. CHAPTER XVIII. Nothing but her terrible fear of being recaptured and imprisoned by her relentless foe could have given poor Flower the strength to get away from the house that, after being her home so long, had become a place "by horror haunted."