"Every word has its own spirit, True or false, that never dies; Every word man's lips have uttered Echoes in God's skies." Pete, the driver of the sleigh in which Clifford Standish had so successfully accomplished the abduction of Geraldine, had told the truth about the affair. Geraldine had indeed fainted at some words he had said to her, and while in this condition he had lifted her in his arms and carried her aboard the train. Ere she recovered from her long spell of unconsciousness, the train was flying across the country in the gloom of the falling night, that, dark as it was, could not equal the blackness of the fate to which Clifford Standish had destined his hapless victim. On reaching the station he had said, abruptly, to Geraldine: "Kindly wait here for me while I go and find Hawthorne." In reality he secured tickets for Chicago, and, returning to her, he said, still in that strange, muffled voice of his: "The time has come for me to explain why Hawthorne trusted you to my care to bring you here." "Did you not find him?" exclaimed Geraldine, uneasily. "Yes." "Is he not coming to me? This looks strange!" she said, with rising resentment. "Be patient, Miss Harding, and let me explain," he said, wheedlingly. They were standing at an obscure place on the platform, and very few people were about except the depot officials. No one noticed the tall, bearded man and his beautiful companion, with her great starry brown eyes and masses of sunshiny hair. Standish proceeded, in an oily voice: "Something shocking happened to my friend Hawthorne this afternoon, and he is compelled to flee the city on this train that you see them making up now. He is watched for at every station in the city, so he dare not come to you now, for his arrest is certain. His sending for you was a desperate expedient to see you once more and bid you farewell forever, or--to take you with him in his flight from justice." With every word he uttered he saw her face grow paler and paler, her large eyes widening with nameless fear; but, without pausing for her to speak, he continued, rapidly: "He is mad with remorse over the awful deed he has done, and wild with grief at the thought of leaving you. He says that you have promised to marry him, and why not now as well as later? He prays you to go with him now on his exile, and to become his bride as soon as his destination is reached." Her pale lips parted, and she interrupted. "Oh, let me see him, let me speak to him! This is so horrible, so sudden!" "You will have to board the train to see him. He is in the rear car, having slipped on almost under the eyes of an officer watching for him. Come," and he attempted to take her hand and draw her forward. But she shrank back in nameless terror, moaning: "Oh, I--can't--go! I am afraid. Oh, tell me what it is that he has done!" He bent closer, muttering one terrible word: "Murder!"