"Another letter! Gad, they come thick and fast! Ta, ta, Fedora! sorry I haven't time to read it; but a fellow must look out for his own neck, and mine has felt deuced uncomfortable ever since I found out that that devil Jack Wren is on my trail. How _did_ he strike it, I wonder; for I thought we had covered up our tracks very cleverly. But the fellow's a sleuth-hound, they tell me, and I've got to escape him. Poor Fedora! it's a pity to leave you to your fate, but the sooner I pack up and be afloat on the briny, the better for my neck," muttered Ivan Belmont, airily, as he moved about his shabby apartment, in a very unsavory quarter of Boston, gathering together his belongings, that were scattered about on chairs and tables. The letter from Fedora that he had found on coming in he tossed unread into the fire, and as he ransacked the bureau drawers he hummed, carelessly: "'Long have I been true to you, Now I'm true no longer.'" It was long past midnight. The tempest had spent its force, and only a fitful, soughing wind and gusty dashes of icy rain remained as souvenirs of its terrific fury. Its worst force had not reached this neighborhood, and Ivan little dreamed that the prison doors had been hurled asunder by the blind force of nature, and that his partner in wickedness had been released and was hastening to their rendezvous in eager joy. Recklessly he flung on the floor her dainty garments and pretty trinkets, seeking the diamonds he had given her in the days when he loved her first--love that had long ago tired, and had now grown heedless, indifferent. "But what the devil did she do with them? I'm positive she left them here. Can they have been stolen? They are worth a pretty penny to me now--they would help me to get away from this place that is getting too hot to hold me." "Help you to get away, you coward! Who helped me, I wonder? The devil, I suppose. They say he takes care of his own!" said a mocking voice behind him. He turned with a start. There stood Fedora! Fedora or her ghost? The voice was there, the glittering, steel-blue eyes; but where was all the prettiness, where the burnished golden locks, the silk attire? This woman was drenched with rain, clothed in rags, and the disheveled tresses that straggled over her brow and shoulders had turned dead white, and their silver gleam was in awful contrast with the drops of blood that trickled down her ashen face. He stared like one turned to stone. He doubted the evidence of his own eyes. That voice, those eyes--but could it be Fedora?