“Try again, old fellow,” said Barstow, eagerly, bending down toward Hine with a horrid smile upon his face, a smile which tried to conceal an intense exasperation, an intense desire to strike.  Again Parminter leaned over the chair, again he took Wallie Hine’s hand and guided the pen, very carefully lifting it from the paper at the end of an initial or a word, and spacing the letters.  This time he seemed content.

“That will do, I think,” he said, in a whisper.

Captain Barstow bent down and examined the writing carefully with his short-sighted eyes.

“Yes, that’s all right.”

Parminter tore the leaf out, but this time he did not crumple it.  He blotted it carefully, folded it, and laid it on the mantle-shelf.

“Let us get him up,” he said, and with Barstow’s help they lifted Hine out of his chair.  Sylvia caught a glimpse of his face.  His mouth was loose, his eyes half shut, and the lids red; he seemed to be in a stupor.  His head rolled upon his shoulders.  He swayed as his companions held him up; his knees gave under him.  He began incoherently to talk.

“Hush!” said Parminter.  “You’ll wake the house.  You don’t want that pretty girl to see you in this state, do you, Wallie?  After the impression you made on her, too!  Get his hat and coat out of the passage, Barstow.”

He propped Hine against the table, and holding him upright turned to the door.  He saw “the pretty girl” leaning over the banister and gazing with horror-stricken eyes into the room.  Sylvia drew back on the instant.  With a gesture of his hand, Archie Parminter stopped Barstow on his way to the door.

Sylvia leaned back against the wall of the staircase, holding her breath, and tightly pressing a hand upon her heart.  Had they seen her?  Would they come out into the passage?  What would happen?  Would they kill her?  The questions raced through her mind.  She could not have moved, she thought, had Death stood over her.  But nothing happened.  She could not now see into the room, and she heard no whisper, no footsteps creeping stealthily along the passage toward her, no sound at all.  Presently she recovered her breath, and crept up-stairs.  Once in her room, with great care she locked the door, and sank upon her bed, shaking and trembling.  There she lay until the noise of the hall door closing very gently roused her.  She crept along the wall till she was by the side of the window.  Then she raised herself against the wall and peered out.  She saw Barstow and Parminter supporting Hine along the street, each with an arm through his.  A hansom-cab drove up, they lifted Hine into it, got in themselves, and drove off.  As the cab turned, Archie Parminter glanced up to the windows of the house.  But Sylvia was behind the curtains at the side.  He could not have seen her.  Sylvia leaned her head against the panels of the door and concentrated all her powers so that not a movement in the house might escape her