Everett laughed sneeringly.

“Miss Shellington would not believe such a tale as that,” said he; “she knows me too well.”

“I do believe him,” said Ann.  “I saw the letter you lost, which Fledra wrote you.  You dropped it in our drawing-room.  Horace found it.”

Everett saw his fall coming.  He would not be worsted by this woman, who had believed once that he was the soul of truth.  To lose her and the prestige of her family, and to lose also Fledra, was more than he would endure.  He bounded forward and grasped her arm fiercely.

“Where is that squatter girl?  I’ll stand nothing from you or that brother of yours!  Where is he, and where is she?”

Ann stood silently praying for strength.  So plainly had Everett shown his colors that she felt disgust grow in her heart, although her eyes were directed straight upon him.  She hoped that the girl in the loft upstairs would not come down until Governor Vandecar returned.  Again she sent up a soul-moving petition for help.

“You can’t have her!” she said, trying to speak calmly.  “She is going to marry my brother, Everett.”

Just then Fledra, robed in her own clothes, scrambled to the top rung of the ladder.  She paused halfway down and glanced over the scene below with unbelieving eyes.

“Go back up, Fledra,” commanded Ann.

“I don’t think she’ll go back up,” gritted Brimbecomb.  “Come down!” He advanced a step, with his hand upon his hip.  “I’ve something to coax you with,” he declared in an undertone.  “It is this!”

Fledra saw the revolver, noted the expression on the man’s face, and stepped slowly down the ladder.  The silence of the moment that followed was broken by several loud hoots of an owl.  The first one seemed in direct proximity to the hut; the last ones came faintly from the shore of the lake.

When she saw the gun, Ann whitened to the ears, and the threat in Everett’s eyes caused Lem to gurgle in his throat, as if he would speak but could not.

“I told you,” said Everett, with his lips close to Fledra’s ear, “that I would use any means to get you....  Stand aside there—­you two!”

He turned his flashing eyes upon the scowman and Ann, and, placing his arm about Fledra, drew her forward.  The girl was so dazed at the turn of affairs that she allowed Everett to drag her, unresisting, half the length of the room.  Then her glance moved upward to Ann.  Miss Shellington’s face was as pallid as death, and her horrified look at Everett brought Fledra to her senses.  The girl looked appealingly at Lem.  The scowman’s squinted eyes and the contortions of his face caused Fledra to cry out: 

“Lem, Lem, save me! save me!”

Crabbe drew his heavy body more compactly together, and, with his eyes glued upon the revolver, advanced along the wall toward Brimbecomb.  His frightful wheezes and choking gulps attracted the lawyer’s attention to him, and the gun was suddenly leveled at his breast.