"I should rather see you dead before me than go with that man to-morrow." "Pray don't kill me, at least till the day is over," Pauline answered, her courage, and her unconquerable carelessness too, returning in the approach of Carew. "It would be quite too great a disappointment to lose my day." "You _shall_ lose it!" said Ash, with a loud coarse oath. "Oh!" said the woman, all her lovely delicate person shrinking away from him. Her intonation had been one of disgust. She held the skirt of her habit closer, as if to avoid all contact. V At five o'clock of the same afternoon Freemantle, Gates, and Beckett, with Arthur Abercrombie, came running along the narrow streets of a village some miles from Paestum. The stone houses of which this village was composed stood like two solid walls facing each other, rising directly from the stone-paved road, which was barely ten feet wide; down this conduit water was pouring like a brook. The houses were about forty in number, twenty on each side, and this one short street was all there was of the town. It was raining, not in drops, but in torrents, with great pats of water coming over, almost like stones, and striking upon the heads of those who were passing below; every two or three minutes there came a glare of blindingly white lightning, followed immediately by the crash of thunder, which seemed to be rolling on the very roofs of the houses themselves. The four boys must have been out in the storm for some time, for they paid no attention to it. Their faces were set, excited. Every thread of their clothing was wet through. "This is the house," said Arthur. They looked up, sheltering their eyes with their arms from the blows of the rain-balls. From the closed windows above, the faces of Isabella Holland and the three Abercrombie girls looked down at them, pressed flatly against the small panes, in order to see; for the storm had made the air so dark that the street lay in gloom. The next moment the boys entered. "No, we haven't found him," said Arthur, in answer to his white sisters' look. "But we're going to." "Yes, we're going to," said the others. And then, walking on tiptoe in their soaked shoes, they went softly into an inner room. Here on a couch lay Griffith Carew, dying. An Italian doctor was still trying to do something for the unconscious man. He had an assistant, and the two were at work together. Near by, old Mrs. Preston sat waiting, her hands folded upon the knob of a cane which stood on the floor before her, her chin resting upon her hands. In this bent position, with her disordered white hair and great black eyes, she looked witch-like. Three candles burned on a table at the head of the bed, illumining Carew and the two doctors and the waiting old woman. The room was long, and its far end was in shadow. Was there another person present--sitting there silent and motionless? Yes--Pauline. The boys came to the foot of the bed and gazed with full hearts at Griff.