“Who’s that?” it said faintly.

Then followed the repeated scratching of a wet match, a flame of yellow light, which was immediately carried to a short tallow candle, and in the aura of its sickly flame Stella Donovan saw the face of a man with long, unkempt beard and feverish eyes that stared at her as though she were an apparition.

CHAPTER XXVI:  THE REAPPEARANCE OF CAVENDISH

As her eyes became more accustomed to the light she saw that the stranger was a man of approximately thirty, of good robust health.  His hair was sandy of colour and thin, and his beard, which was of the same hue, had evidently gone untrimmed for days, perhaps weeks; yet for all of his unkempt appearance, for all the strangeness of his presence there, he was a gentleman, that was plain.  And as she scrutinised him Miss Donovan thought she beheld a mild similarity in the contour of the man’s head, the shape of his face, the lines of his body, to the man whom, several weeks before, she had seen lying dead upon the floor of his rooms in the Waldron apartments.

Could this be Frederick Cavendish?  By all that had gone before, he should be; but the longer she looked at him the less certain she was of the correctness of this surmise.  Of course the face of the man in the Waldron apartments had been singed by fire so that it was virtually unrecognisable, thus making comparisons in the present instance difficult.  At any rate, she dismissed the speculation temporarily from her mind, and resolved to divulge nothing for the time, but merely to draw the man out.  Her thoughts, rapid as they had been, were interrupted by the fellow’s sudden exclamation.

“My God!” he cried in a high voice, “I—­I thought I was seeing things.  You are really a woman—­and alive?”

Miss Donovan hesitated a moment before she answered, wondering whether to tell him of her narrow escape.  This she decided to do.

“Alive, but only by luck,” she said in a friendly voice, and then recounted the insults of Cateras, her struggle with him, and capture of his cartridge belt and revolver, and how finally she had left him bound and gagged in the adjoining cell.  The man listened attentively, though his mind seemed slow to grasp details.

“But,” he insisted, unable to clear his brain, “why are you here?  Surely you are not one of this gang of outlaws?”

“I am inclined to think,” she answered soberly, “that much the same cause must account for the presence of both of us.  I am a prisoner.  That is true of you also, is it not?”

“Yes,” his voice lowered almost to a whisper.  “But do not speak so loud, please; there is an opening above the door, so voices can be heard by any guard in the corridor.  I—­I am a prisoner, although I do not in the least know why.  When did you come?”

“Not more than two hours ago.  Two men brought me across the desert from Haskell.”