Teddy had a warm heart, and it was no disloyalty to Kathleen that made him sigh so sadly. He would not have exchanged her for any other girl he had ever loved; but somehow the thought of Gussie haunted him. She had been his first love, and it was a lover's quarrel that had driven them asunder. That was several years ago, and now she was married and a shining literary light: but it was quite certain that if ever Kathleen had a rival in Teddy's thoughts, it would be this one lost love. A loud rap at the door startled him. It was Jack Wren, who entered in haste with an excited face. "I had quite given you up, Mr. Wren," said Teddy, startled out of his tender recollections. "Darrell, come with me. We have no time to lose. I have made a startling discovery. I have a cab waiting below, and you must come with me to the rescue of one you love, for she is at this moment in peril of her life! I have been on Ivan Belmont's track ever since I saw you, and he and Fedora, who escaped from the prison when the cyclone shattered it, are together now at Cooper's saw-mill, in Wild Cat Glen, plotting a terrible crime!" breathlessly answered Jack Wren. CHAPTER LXVIII. IN MORTAL PERIL. Listen to the water-wheel All the live long day-- How the clinking of the mill Wears the hours away. --_Old Song_. People always wondered why old Cooper ever built his saw-mill in so wild a place as that lonely glen; but the scene, the crazy old building, and the strange old man, all seemed to chime together, and no one was surprised that when he died he expressed the wish to be buried in the glen, close to the old mill, that his dreamless rest might be soothed by the sound of the grinding wheel day by day. Madame Rumor said that the old man's ghost haunted the wild, forbidding gorge, and Kathleen shuddered with dread as she climbed up the rocky path, with the cascade tumbling wildly beneath, on her rendezvous with her unknown correspondent. She had come within half a mile in a cab, which she left waiting for her while she made the rest of the journey on foot. To escape Helen's kind inquiries, she had said she was going to spend the night with Mrs. Stone, which she really intended doing on her return. How gloomy the old mill looked in the pallor of the swiftly falling night! All winter the snows had held it bound in an icy thrall, but now the April sun had sent the mass of foaming, dashing water tumbling over the falls, and turned the old saw. What a scene for a crime! thought Kathleen, with a thrill of superstitious dread, as she hurried on in the deepening gloom, casting furtive glances about her, as though she expected to see Cooper's disembodied spirit hovering near. Frightened and nervous, she half regretted that she had come, and at the hooting of an owl in the tree near by, she uttered a frightened scream which rang through the gloomy glen in hollow, reverberating echoes, and fell prostrate on the ground.