Not a word was spoken. The Madam, unable to support herself, sank on the foot of the bed, and Barnhurst, staggered to his feet again, looked around the room with a visage stamped with guilt and terror. Arthur quietly advanced a step, and closed the door of the room. Then he locked it and put the key in his pocket. "What do you mean?" cried the Madam the color rushing into her face. "No noise," whispered Arthur, "unless indeed,"--and he smiled in a way which she understood,--"unless, indeed, you mean to alarm the neighborhood, and bring the police into the room. Would you like to have the police examine your house?" The Madam bit her red lip, but did not answer. Arthur passed her, and approached the Rev. Herman Barnhurst. "Nay, don't be afraid; I will not hurt you," he whispered, as the clergyman stretched forth his hands and retreated toward the wall. "Come, take courage, man,--look there!" He pointed to the face of Alice. Herman, ashy pale, and shaking in every limb, followed the movement of Arthur's hand, but did not utter a word. "A 'man of your cloth' to be 'suspected'--eh, my friend?" and Arthur, laughed. "A minister of THE Church, to be suspected of seduction and of murder? Is it not a lying tongue that dare charge you, Reverend sir, with such crimes?" Here, poor Alice, writhing in the bed, spoke a faint word about father, and home. Barnhurst, cringing against the wall, his smooth complexion changed to a livid paleness, muttered an incoherent word about "reparation." "Oh, you _shall_ make reparation,--never fear; you _shall_ make reparation," whispered Dermoyne, his eyes fairly blazing with light. "And you visited her father's house as a minister of God. She heard you preach in the church, and you talked to her in her home. What words you said, I know not; but some forty-eight hours ago you took her from her home; but a few hours have passed since then. The father lies a mangled corpse somewhere between this house and Philadelphia; and Alice, the daughter, is before you. Are you not proud of your work, my reverend friend?" Herman's eye glanced from the ominous face of Dermoyne, and then to the iron bar which he held in his clenched hand,-- "You will not--kill--me?" he gasped. Arthur was silent. The veins upon his forehead were swollen; his teeth were locked; his eyes, deep sunken under his down-drawn brows, emitted a steady and sinister light. He was _thinking_.