In less time than it takes to narrate it, Lester Armstrong was hurriedly conveyed into the house.

The place consisted of but two rooms, and into the inner one Lester was thrust with but little ceremony, and tossed upon a pallet of straw in the corner.

He had not entirely lost consciousness, as they supposed, but was only stunned, realizing fully all that was transpiring about him.

“Your scheme has worked like a charm, Halloran,” said Kendale.  “We have bagged our game more easily than I imagined we would.  Now there is nothing in the way between me and the fortune that liberal old fool Marsh willed to my amiable cousin.”

“Everything rests with the shrewdness with which you play your part,” answered the man addressed as Halloran.

“You ought not to have any scruples on that score,” exclaimed Kendale, boastfully.  “After leaving my amiable cousin on the night of the accident, did I not go immediately to the pretty little heiress, Faynie Fairfax, and successfully pass myself off as the lover she was waiting to elope with?  And the little beauty never knew the difference.”

“I must own that you played your cards successfully in that direction,” was the response, “but this will be a far different matter from hoodwinking a young, unsophisticated girl.”

“Within a month from to-day I shall have the Fairfax fortune and the Marsh millions added to it,” said Clinton Kendale, emphatically.

“I would put an eternal quietus upon my fortunate cousin here, did I not need his assistance in one or two matters concerning the method of running the business, which was known only to old Marsh and himself.”

“Are you fool enough to think that he will divulge those secrets to you?” said Halloran, impatiently.

“They can be forced from him.  I know how,” returned Kendale, with a brutal laugh.  “Come,” he said, turning on his heel.

His companion followed him from the apartment, and the door closed with a resounding bang, and Lester lay there too horror-stricken to move hand or foot, fairly spellbound by the disclosures he had overheard as they stood over him, believing him unconscious.

All in an instant a great wave of awakened memory swept over him, opening out the flood-gates of recollection like a flash.  He remembered his interview with his sweetheart, his darling Faynie, and how he was arranging to hurry back to marry her when the fatal accident occurred, and how, believing himself dying, he had confided all to his treacherous cousin, bidding him take the message to his darling, that even in death his only thought was of her.

Oh, merciful God! how horribly had his treacherous cousin betrayed that sacred trust, because of his fatal resemblance to himself!  He cried out to God and the listening angels: 

“Heaven help my beautiful darling and save her from the machinations of that desperate villain!”