"Give me that money!" grumbled the hag, with the tone and look of a wild beast. "I--I--Mrs. Brinkley put it in a savings bank for me!" faltered Liane, bracing herself for defense, for her startled eyes suddenly saw murder in the old woman's face. She felt all at once as if she would have given worlds to be outside that locked door, away from the deadly peril that menaced her in the beastly eyes of half-drunken granny. She was not a coward. Yesterday she had faced death bravely for Mrs. Clarke's sake, and would have given her life freely for another's; but this was different. To be murdered by the old hag who had blasted all her young life, just as her hopes of happiness seemed about to be realized, oh, it was horrible! Unrelenting fate seemed to pursue her to the last. She drew back with a gasping cry, for the old woman was upon her with the growl of a wild beast and the well-remembered spring of many a former combat, when the weak went down before the strong. Liane, who had always been too gentle to strike back before, now realized that she must fight for her life. Granny intended to kill her this time, she felt instinctively, and silently prayed Heaven's aid. She opened her lips to shriek and alarm the household, but granny's skinny claw closed over her mouth before she could utter a sound, and then a most unequal struggle ensued. Liane was no match for the old tigress, who scratched, and bit, and tore with fury, finally snatching up a club that she had provided for the occasion, and striking the girl on her head, so that she went down like a log to the floor. Granny Jenks snarled like a hyena, and stooped down over her mutilated victim. She lay white and breathless on the floor, her pallid face marked with blood stains, not a breath stirring her young bosom, and the fiend growled viciously: "Dead as a doornail, and out of my pretty Roma's way forever!" Suddenly there came the loud shuffling of feet in the hall, and the pounding of eager fists on the locked door. Granny Jenks started in wild alarm. She realized that the sounds of her struggle had been heard, and regretted her precipitate onslaught on Liane. "I should have waited till they were all asleep; but that whisky fired my blood too soon!" she muttered, as, paying no heed to the outside clamor, she dragged the limp body of her lovely victim to the inner room, throwing it on the bed and drawing the covers over it, leaving a part of her face exposed in a natural way, as if she were asleep. She was running a terrible risk of detection but nothing but bravado could save her now. She dimmed the light, and returned to the other room, demanding: "Who is there? What do you want?" Several angry voices vociferated: "Let us in! You are beating Liane!" At that she snarled in rage and threw wide the door, confronting Mrs. Brinkley and her sister, with the two new boarders.