The hum of voices again came to her ears. She lay still and listened. A single terrible sentence she caught. He spoke it with such malignant power she could see through the darkness the flames of hell leaping in his eyes. “Nobody's going to ask you HOW you got it--all they want to know is HAVE you got it!” She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation that had stirred her to such desperate appeal in the first shock of discovery. As well dream of reforming the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of life in that sentence! Blood dripped from every word, the blood of the innocent and the helpless who might consciously or unconsciously stand in his way. The man who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no matter what the cost to others, would commit murder without the quiver of an eyelid. If she had ever had a doubt of this fact, she could have none after her experience of tonight. She wondered vaguely of the effects he was producing on his ignorant old mother. Her words were too low and indistinct to be heard. But she feared the worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her would be more than she could resist. She staggered to her feet and fell limp across the bed. The iron walls of a life prison closed about her crushed soul. The one door that could open was Death and only God's hand could lift its bars. CHAPTER XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the shed-room and with the patience of a cat waited for the sobs to cease and the girl to be quiet. Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the floor in the dark for more than an hour, like a frightened, wild animal, trapped and caged for the first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted the beat of her foot-fall, five steps one way and five back--round after round, round after round, in ceaseless repetition. “Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!” she exclaimed. The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came once more from the bed. The old woman crouched down on a stone beside the log wall and drew the shawl about her shoulders. A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless thing inside was stirring. Nance rose uneasily. Her lantern was still burning in her storehouse under the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode. She had heard that such things happened to lamps. It was foolish to have left it burning, anyhow. She glided noiselessly from the house into the woods, entered her hidden door exactly as she had done before, extinguished the lantern, placed it on a shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it. In ten minutes she had returned to the house and crouched once more against the wall of the shed. The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed her ear to the crack and heard distinctly. She must be patient. Her plan was sure to succeed if she were only patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer exhaustion before day.