"For God's sake, colonel, don't open this door!" cried Catherine. "I give you my word, the spy is not behind it!" "Madam, I must!" said Maclean, gravely. "Your own conduct shows you have some one concealed there. 'Tis your kind heart makes you wish to save the life of a hunted man, but perhaps many lives of loyal subjects depend on his capture. I beg you, stand aside, madam." "I will not stand aside! While I have the strength, I will protect this door!" said Catherine. Completely deceived by her solicitude over the door behind which Dick was not, the colonel, with as much gentleness as he could use, caught her in his arms and drew her from before that door, she resisting and protesting with the ejaculations, "For the sake of heaven! Take my word! There's no one there! Believe me! Don't open, I beg!" He then threw wide the door, and peered through the opening. "Why!" he said, "there's a stairway here. Men, follow me down the steps!" He strode through the newly opened doorway, the two men at his heels. Catherine instantly flung the door shut upon them, and locked it. "Across the landing," she whispered loudly to Dick; "window at the other side of the house--no guards there!" "I love you!" he whispered back, having emerged from behind his door. "Shall we meet again?" "God knows! Perhaps! Good night!" she said. He seized her hand, in the darkness, and pressed it to his lips; then dashed through the doorway, across the landing, up the little flight of stairs at his left, into the first room ahead whose door he ran against, then to a window, which at once gave way to the force he brought to bear against it. He stepped out to the roof of the porch in front of the house, slid down a corner-post, ran through the yet open gateway to Palace Street, hastened leftward to the first intersecting street, and turned, again leftward, into that street, which led him towards the wall-crowned precipice that overlooked the St. Lawrence. Meanwhile, the people in the hallway had caught the momentary view of his figure as it leaped across the landing, but they, in their ignorance of what had passed in Catherine's room, and in the unlikelihood of the fugitive's eluding Maclean without any outcry or pursuit on the latter's part, had supposed the flying apparition to be that of one of Maclean's men, despatched by the colonel on some business to them unknown. Dick had not remained a sufficient time in sight for his rifleman's attire to be distinguished in the half-darkness of the landing. So they waited for some appearance from Catherine's chamber.