“Get up!” roared Lathrop.  “Stand up to it, you coward!”

But the man had no idea of standing up to it.  Howling with pain, he scrambled toward the door, and fled staggering down the hall.

At the same moment the automobile that a few minutes before had passed up the road came limping to the gate, and a half-dozen men in uniform sprang out of it.  From the window Lathrop saw them spread across the lawn and surround the house.

“They’ve got him!” he said.  He pointed to the prostrate figure on the floor.  “He and the other one,” he explained, breathlessly, “are New York crooks!  They have been looting in the wake of the Reds, disguised as soldiers.  I knew they weren’t even amateur soldiers by the mistakes in their make-up, and I made that bluff of riding away so as to give them time to show what the game was.  Then, that provost guard in the motor car stopped me, and when they said who they were after, I ordered them back here.  But they had a flat tire, and my bicycle beat them.”

In his excitement he did not notice that the girl was not listening, that she was very pale, that she was breathing quickly, and trembling.

“I’ll go tell them,” he added, “that the other one they want is up here.”

Miss Farrar’s strength instantly returned.

With a look of terror at the now groaning figure on the floor, she sprang toward Lathrop, with both hands clutching him by his sleeves.

“You will not!” she commanded.  “You will not leave me alone!”

Appealingly she raised her face to his startled countenance.  With a burst of tears she threw herself into his arms.  “I’m afraid!” she sobbed.  “Don’t leave me.  Please, no matter what I say, never leave me again!”

Between bewilderment and joy, the face of Lathrop was unrecognizable.  As her words reached him, as he felt the touch of her body in his arms, and her warm, wet cheek against his own, he drew a deep sigh of content, and then, fearfully and tenderly, held her close.

After a pause, in which peace came to all the world, he raised his head.

“Don’t worry!” he said.  “You can bet I won’t leave you!”