"Good!" laughed Ivan, hoarsely; and he looked back over his shoulder at Kathleen's convulsed, almost supernaturally pale face at the window. "Ha! ha! my proud lady, you would send me to prison for stealing your diamonds, would you? But I foiled your game! It was I that decoyed you to Richmond with a lying letter; I that flung you into the deep, dark river to perish. Well, you escaped then, but you will not be so fortunate now. Do you realize the fate that lies before you? I decoyed both you and your lover here. Why, you ask? For revenge upon you both. Do you see yonder glittering saw, with its hungry teeth, waiting to cut your delicate body to atoms and drink your life-blood? Well, we are only waiting for you to see your lover dead before we devote you to the same torture. He is dead already, you say? No; he is reviving. See that tremor creep along his frame! See his eyelids tremble! Ha! his eyes open! he sees! he understands! Oh, the anguish on his face! How happy it makes me! Look, Fedora, at his tortures. Are we not already avenged?" Her answer was a laugh of fiendish triumph. "Oh, yes; it is glorious--glorious! I am in no haste for their death. I like to see them suffering like this. I want to prolong their torture!" she exclaimed. "What do you say, dear Ivan? Shall we let them live a few hours yet to realize the horrors that surround them? What avails their love, their beauty, their wealth now? To-morrow they will be lifeless clods, and I the rich widow, Mrs. Chainey!" "Baffled!" said a hoarse, triumphant voice, and, turning, she met Ralph Chainey's burning gaze. "You mistake," said her victim, faintly but audibly. "I made my will weeks ago, and divided my whole fortune between my mother and Kathleen." A scream of baffled fury escaped her lips; but Ivan said, quickly: "You can contest the will, Fedora." "Yes; I will fight for my rights to the bitter end!" she shrieked, then sprung toward him in a fury. "Let us end this farce; let us show them no further mercy. He dies now, Ivan! Go, set the saw in motion!" He moved forward in eager obedience to her order, and Ralph Chainey realized that his moments were indeed numbered, and that death in the most horrible and soul-sickening shape was approaching. He made an almost superhuman effort to burst the bonds that held him fast, but the attempt was useless. He was weakened by the illness through which he had just passed, and could not move. With a prayer in his heart to Heaven, he turned his dark, despairing eyes toward the beautiful, anguished face at the window. "Courage, my own love!" he called to her, bravely. "Death is but a fleeting pang, and then it will be life forever. Turn your sweet eyes away, my own Kathleen; do not torture yourself with the sight of my fate. You will come to me soon, and we----" His voice broke, drowned by the whir of the wheel as it began its revolutions, slowly drawing the plank with its doomed victim within its jaws. Oh, God, what a moment!