Yes, the sound was audible enough now.  There was somebody in the corridor creeping toward the spot where she stood, with swift but noiseless feet.

Nearer, nearer the footsteps crept, the soft, low-bated breathing sounding closer with every step.

With a presence of mind which few young girls possessed, Faynie suddenly stepped forward and turned on the gas jet from an electric button, full head.

The sight which met her gaze fairly rooted her to the spot.

For one brief instant of time it seemed to Faynie as though her breath was leaving her body.

She stood paralyzed, unable to stir hand or foot, if her very life had depended upon it.

Outside the wind blew dismally; the shutters creaked to and fro on their hinges; the leafless branches of the trees tapped their ghostly fingers against the panes.

Faynie tried to speak—­to cry out—­but her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth, powerless.  Her hands fell to her side a dead weight, her eyes fairly bulging from their sockets.

It almost seemed to the girl that she was passing through the awful transition of death.

The blood in her veins was turning to ice, and the heart in her bosom to marble.

In an upper room, afar off, she heard one of the servants coughing protractedly in her sleep.

Oh, God! if she could but burst the icy bonds that bound her hand and foot and cry out—­bring the household about her.  Her lips opened, but no sound came from them.

The very breath in her body seemed dying out with each faint gasp that broke over the white, mute lips.

Outside the night winds grew wilder and fiercer.  A gust of hail battered against the window panes and rattled down the wide-throated chimneys.  Then suddenly; all was still again!

Oh, pitiful heavens! how hard Faynie tried to break the awful bonds that held her there, still, silent, motionless, unable to move or utter any sound, staring in horror words cannot picture at the sight that met her strained gaze.

It had only been an instant of time since the bright blaze of the gas had illuminated the darkened corridor, yet it seemed to Faynie, standing there, white and cold as an image carved in marble, that long years had passed.

CHAPTER XXV.

“I intend to watch you die, inch by inch, day by day!”

Before going on further with the thrilling event which we narrated in our last chapter it will be necessary to devote a few explanatory lines to the still more thrilling scene which led up to it, returning to the real Lester Armstrong, whom we left in the isolated cabin in the custody of Halloran.

Lester’s intense anxiety when Kendale forcibly took the keys from him and disappeared can better be imagined than described.