Coming Through the Rye (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

a moment."

      Sherwood motioned to Chris to go, and the boy stepped out from the curtains with a low murmured expression of horror. In order to get out he had to step over her feet as she sat huddled with what was left of her father in her arms. He went stumbling out into the darkened street with tears rolling down his nice boyish face. He had always like Romayne. He had always looked up to her. She had been the head of his class, and he the foot. He had looked upon her as a sort of angel. And now this! And he having to go against her. But he knew what to do in an emergency. He darted across a hedge and two back fences, and was soon ringing the bell of the nearest physician.

      Inside the house Sherwood had quietly organized his forces. Water was brought, and someone produced aromatic ammonia. Stern faces stooped gravely, but the girl’s slender hand took the water from them and held it to the still-ashen lips that somehow seemed like lips no longer.

      Frantically the girl applied the remedies that were brought and held in her aching, eager young arms the form that was so dear.

      "Father!" she called, "Father!" as if she were crying to him to return from a great distance. "It is all right, Father, you needn’t worry! They did me no harm. It was only a ridiculous mistake. They intended to go somewhere else, of course. You needn’t mind, Father! Of course, when they know, they will be very much ashamed!"

      But there was no sign or stir from the limp form in her arms.

      Finally she lifted great eyes of appeal to Sherwood’s face.

      "If you ever have been a gentleman, I beg that you will go to the telephone and call my father’s friend, Judge Freeman. He will explain it all to you, and then perhaps you will have the grace to apologize and withdraw. When my father becomes conscious, if I tell him it was a mistake and that you have apologized and withdrawn, he will be calmer, and perhaps he may get over this. You must get Judge Freeman quickly! There is no time to waste! Tell him I beg that he will come to us at once. We are in great trouble!"

      The young man’s voice was very gentle.

      "I’m so sorry," he said, "but Judge Freeman cannot help you now. He——"

      "Oh—you needn’t be afraid to call him!" she said contemptuously. "I’ll see that you do not get into any trouble through it. We are not the kind who prosecute people even if they are—murderers!" she ended bitterly, with tears dropping upon the white face in her lap.

      There was a little stir behind her. Almost as if a throng were entering. A strange doctor stooped beside her and slipped a practiced finger on the patrician wrist of her father. Just behind came Chris panting. The men in uniform seemed to have multiplied. They were on all sides of the room—silently. Had there been only two of them before? How confused her mind was! Perhaps she was only dreaming. Had she been going to a house party a little while before? Was this all real?

      Stern-faced men were lifting her father now at the doctor’s command, men in uniform, who walked with measured tread as if they were used to doing gruesome tasks, as if they were ordained of God for such terrible offices. They carried him upstairs. They did not ask her where to go. They swept her aside as if she were a child.

      They opened a door at the head of the stairs. She stood dazed, watching them. How had they known which was his room? She seemed to know without seeing that they were laying him upon his bed, and they were shutting the door!

      She cast a look of rebuke about upon the men who stood there silently, the man Sherwood notably at their head, the boy Chris drooping, just behind him, and fled up the stairs.

      But they put her out—silently, gently, but firmly, and shut the door. She stood a moment staring horror in the face and then went swiftly down the stairs as she had come up and stopped in front of Sherwood.

      "Where is my brother?" she demanded breathlessly. Her face was stained with tears, and her gold hair was ruffled around her sweet face. There was something fine and glorious in her eyes such as one sees in the eyes of a child who is in search of its mother.

      A look passed between Sherwood and Chris, and back again. It said: "Did they get him?" Its answer: "They did. He is in custody." The miserable truth sat upon Chris’s nice-boy face written large. There was yearning tenderness in Sherwood’s eyes as he looked back at the slender girl in her little bright spring outfit, all rumpled now and a stain of water down the front where she had spilled it trying to make her father drink.

      "He is not here just now," he temporized. "He had to go away. Will you not try to forget what part I had to play in all this and let me help you for the present?"

      "Had to?" repeated the girl sharply, ignoring his offer. "Do you mean they took him away?" Her perceptions seemed suddenly sharply awake.

      Sherwood looked at her compassionately. A flash passed between him and the boy again. She saw it.

      "Have they?" she appealed to Chris.

      He nodded miserably.

      "Do you mean they have arrested my brother?" She turned back to Sherwood, her voice suddenly grown older, more mature.

      Sherwood could only bow gravely.

      "But—what for?"

      "For complicity—with your father. They have acted together in this business——"

      "Stop!" said Romayne, trying to speak calmly. "It is terrible for you to say such things with him lying up there!"

      She caught her breath in a sob and hurried on: "But I want you to try to be sensible, and tell me what made you ever get an idea like this? You know you will have to prove a statement such as you have just made."

      The young man bowed again.

      "I’m very sorry, Miss Ransom, but it has been proved."

      "Where is your proof?" she demanded, her eyes flashing with the restrained look of one who feels strong and sure of her position and can afford to hold her anger in abeyance until facts come to her rescue.

      The young man looked at her sadly for a moment and then spoke.

      "Miss Ransom, I would have spared you if I could, but I suppose you will have to know the truth sooner or later, although I would rather it were not my task to tell you. Can’t you be persuaded to take my word for it, and spare yourself the unpleasant details? No one has any wish to bring trouble upon you."

      "I thought you could not prove your charges," flashed the girl, with bitter contempt in her tone. "You are a coward and afraid to face the truth!"

      For answer Sherwood turned to her, his face hardening.

      "Come then," he said half-bitterly. "I have warned you. It is your own fault if you have to suffer."

      He stepped to the panel beside the beautiful carved mantel and touched a spring. The panel swung open and disclosed a set of shelves inside, shallow shelves, as she had told him a little while before, filled with papers fastened in neat bundles with rubber bands about them, official-looking documents, and each shelf labeled with letters of the alphabet. A gleam of triumph came in her eyes.

      But even as it dawned, the young man silently touched what looked like a nail head, and the whole set of shelves, papers and all, began to move, slowly, smoothly, swinging around out of sight into a recess somewhere behind the mantel, leaving a dark opening into a cavern-like space beyond. It could not exactly be called a doorway, yet it was wide enough for a person to pass through.

      Romayne stood staring in amazement and said nothing.

      The young man reached his hand through the opening and touched a button, and a shaded light sprang up in the space beyond.

      "Come!" he said, and with strange premonition Romayne followed him, stepping through the opening with a strange sensation of fright, yet unable to refuse to follow.

      It was a room that she arrived in through the narrow door, a room with little attempt at beauty and luxury. There were tables and chairs, and pictures on the wall. Several of the chairs were pushed back as if their occupants had left them in a hurry. There was a lady’s glove upon the