“Go wake her instantly! Call Mr. Willoughby and the men servants. Oh, tell them to guard Miss Ritchie in her room! While unseen on the lonely road, I overheard two ruffians plotting to steal her diamonds and murder her if she resisted!” They stared at her in incredulous amazement. Surely she was out of her senses, poor girl, raving in delirium from her pain. “Water! Water!” she gasped, and when she had moistened her poor, feverish lips she began again: “You do not believe me; you think I am raving, but it is not so! Oh, Miss Willoughby, please believe me! I overheard burglars plotting to rob you of your silver, and your niece of her jewels. They had followed her from town because Hattie, Miss Lelia’s maid, had told them she had brought ten thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds here. They said they would have them if they had to kill her and Miss Willoughby, too.” Her earnest voice, her appealing eyes, carried conviction to Miss Willoughby’s heart. She gasped out faintly: “Lucinda, go ask Mr. Laurie to step here quickly.” Lucinda bolted out, and the old lady drew the white covers over the girl, leaving only her pallid, suffering face exposed when Laurie entered. To him she repeated, between moans of pain, the story of the plot she had overheard. “They said they would have the job done by midnight, and it is almost that now,” she sobbed. “Oh, what if they have already forced an entrance to her room! Oh, go--go; waste not a moment, for her life may be hanging in the balance while you delay!” It needed nothing more to make him rush with a groan from the room. At the same moment he heard the voice of the doctor that Crawford had brought coming up the stairs, and called to him in a frenzied voice: “Come, doctor, and you, Crawford, with me to Miss Ritchie’s room. There may be something serious happening there! Heavens! I heard her shriek!” CHAPTER IX. SHE STARED DEATH IN THE FACE. The sound of a muffled shriek had, indeed, come faintly to Laurie’s ears from the direction of Lelia’s room, chilling the blood in his veins with fear and horror. He ran frantically toward her door, followed fast by the portly doctor and the sinewy Crawford, who had the strength of a prize-fighter in his black fists. Again a muffled shriek, then silence, as they tried to turn the handle of the unyielding door. “We must burst it in!” breathed Laurie tensely, with the cold dew of excitement beading his high white brow. All together, they hurled their strong bodies forward with determined will. The lock could not stand their furious onslaught. It yielded, the screws parted, the door crashed inward with such suddenness that all three tumbled in a heap upon the floor, gasping as if the breath had been knocked out of them. But like a flash they sprang up again, and not a minute too soon. For the sight that met their eyes was maddening to their manly hearts. The masked burglars had succeeded but too easily in their designs.