Our history now returns to Madam Resimer, whom we left in her most secret chamber, near ten o'clock, on the 24th of December, listening to the sound of the bell, which resounded through her mansion. It was the bell of the secret passage. "Who can it be?" again ejaculated the Madam, as she stood in the center of the room, with the light of the candle on one side of her florid face. To which Corkins, who stood behind her, his slender form lost in her capacious shadow, responded in a quivering voice, "Who _can_ it be?" Much troubled and very angry, and not knowing upon whom to vent her anger, the Madam turned upon her trembling satellite, and addressing him by numerous titles, not one of which but was more vigorous than elegant or complimentary, she bade him,-- "Run for your life. Answer the hell of the secret passage! Don't be foolin' away your time, when the very devil's to pay and no pitch hot. Cut!" Corkins accordingly "_cut_," or, to speak in a less classical phrase, he glided from the room. How anxiously the Madam waited there, in her most secret chamber, with her finger to her lip, and the candle-light on one side of her face! "Who can it be? Only four persons in the world know of this secret passage. It can't be this devil from Philadelphia? O, I shall do somebody a mischief! I can't endure this any longer,--" Hark! There are footsteps in the corridor; they approach the Madam's room. She fixes her small black eyes upon the door, with the intensity of a--cat, contemplating a rat-hole. "This way," cries the voice of Corkins, and he enters the room, followed by two persons, one of whom is taller than the other, and both of whom wear caps and cloaks. "Has _he_ come back?" cries the taller of the two, in a voice that trembles with anxiety and fear,--he lifts his cap, and discloses the face of Herman Barnhurst. "No,--no,--I haven't laid eyes upon him since last night," and she clutched Barnhurst by the arm,--"Where did you leave him?" "He went home with me," replied Barnhurst, and stopped to gaze around that room, dimly lighted by a single candle, as though he was afraid that Dermoyne was concealed in its shadows.--"I left him in the parlor down stairs. He was determined to wait for me until morning, and then come with me to this house. But this morning, when I came down stairs, he was not there." "He was not there?" echoed the Madam, breathless with impatience. "He wasn't there; there was blood upon the sofa and the carpet, and marks of a struggle." The Madam uttered a round oath and a cry of joy. "Good,--capital! My boys have done their work. You see, Herman, I sent Dirk and Slung after him, and they've laid him out. It's a sure thing." Herman, even in his fright, could not but help shuddering, as he heard the cool manner in which she spoke of Dermoyne's death. The next instant the idea of his own safety rose uppermost in his mind. "Do you think that your fellows have taken good care of him?" he asked.