That was about all they could get out of him--monosyllables--until Janice retired to her own room. The girl was so anxious to get upstairs and look at that paper she had recovered from the reading-room fire, that she went early. When she had bidden the others good night and mounted to her room, however, she did something she had never done before. She unlatched her door again softly and tiptoed out to the landing at the top of the stairs, to listen. Marty had suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense, dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body, Marty! It ain't so--don't _say_ it's so!" "Be still, 'Mira," commanded Uncle Jason's quaking voice. "Let the boy tell it." She heard nothing more but the murmur of her cousin's voice and her aunt's soft crying. Janice stole back into her cold room. She shook terribly, but not with the chill of the frosty air. Her trembling fingers found a match and ignited the wick of the skeleton lamp. She had, ere this, manufactured a pretty paper shade for it, and this threw the stronger radiance of the light upon a round spot on the bureau. She drew out the scorched paper and unfolded it in that light. She did not have to search long. The article she feared to see was upon the first page of the paper. The black headlines were so plain that she scanned them at a single glance: THE BANDIT, RAPHELE, AT WORK A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week Execution in Granadas District TWO AMERICANS DRAW LOTS FOR LIFE John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His Fellow-Prisoner, Broxton Day, Fills One of Raphele's "Christmas Graves" CHAPTER XVIII "THE FLY-BY-NIGHT" Janice Day could never have told how long she sat there, elbows on the bureau, eyes glued to those black lines on the newspaper page. The heat of the tall oil lamp almost scorched her face; but her back was freezing. There was never anything invented--not even a cold storage plant--as cold as the ordinary New England farmhouse bedchamber! But the girl felt neither the lamp's heat, nor the deadly chill of the room. For a long time she could not even read beyond the mere headlines of the article telegraphed from Cida. This seemed to be conclusive. It was the end of all hope for Janice--or, so she then believed. There seemed not a single chance that her father could have escaped. No news had been good news, after all. This story in the paper was all too evil--all too certainly evil! By and by she managed to concentrate her numbed mind upon the story itself. There is no need to repeat it here in full; when Janice had read it twice she could not easily forget its most unimportant phrase.