Absorbed in his fascinating employment, the miser had not noticed her entrance. He continued to play with the gold like a child, pouring it from one trembling hand to the other, muttering and chuckling in a strange ecstasy. Nita summoned all her will-power to break the thrall of terror that seemed to hold her limbs immovable. Suddenly, the power of motion returned. She turned softly, made two catlike steps, and was on the stairs on the other side of the door, safe--ah, what was that grating sound? In drawing the door softly to behind her the rusty hinge had creaked harshly! Nita's heart gave a bound of deadly fear, she gasped for breath, and sprang wildly forward. If only she could reach the corridor above with its intricate windings, she could elude pursuit in some dark corner. But from the room she had left came a sound between a howl and a groan, and the old man bounded to the stairs with such wondrous agility that his outstretched hand caught the long skirts of the escaping girl, and dragged her ruthlessly backward. Clutching her fiercely, in spite of her cries and struggles for liberty, and bearing her forward into the light, he gazed eagerly into her face. A bitter oath escaped his lips as he beheld in his struggling captive the face of his beautiful, unloving bride. To Nita, with her nerves yet unstrung by sickness and excitement, the sight of the old miser's face, distorted by rage and surprise, was absolutely terrifying. She trembled like a leaf in his rude grasp, and moans of terror came from her blanched lips. "Spy!" he hissed angrily, and in the fierce malevolent gleam of his snakelike eyes she read a wild temptation to grasp her fair white throat in his strong hands and throttle her to death. "Spy! You have followed me here!" the old man hissed again savagely. He shook her rudely until the breath had almost left her body, then flung her upon one of the chests, and, locking the little door, dropped the key into his pocket. She was at the mercy of this fiendish old man who had come into her life so strangely, and at so dark an hour. "Release me, oh, release me!" she gasped faintly, pleadingly, but he looked at her with pitiless eyes, and answered: "Once before a woman, filled with the greed for gold, followed me here to find out the secret of my hidden treasures. Well--her friends are searching for her yet, as perchance yours will be, too, for many a year." "You murdered her!" gasped Nita, with a creeping thrill of utter horror. "No," he replied, and after a moment's pause continued with a hideous leer: "I simply left her locked in this room and went away, leaving her alone with the treasure she coveted. It was a long, long time before I came back, and then--I found her still here." "Still here!" the startled captive repeated. He saw the shudder that crept over her frame, and laughed mockingly. "Still here--waiting for me still," he sneered. "Always here, waiting for me when I come. Look!"