She saw Dink return from the summer kitchen with the long knife.  She recalled the day she had bought that knife in town, and the various uses to which she had put it.  That very morning she had sliced some bacon with it.  How distinctly such little things recurred to her at this frightful moment.  And now the hideous creature standing beside her was going to use it to cut her throat.

She saw Crumb take the knife and feel of the blade, running his thumb along it.  She saw him stoop, his eyes turned down upon hers.  He grasped her chin and forced it upward and back, the better to expose her throat.

Oh, why could she not faint?  Why must she suffer all these hideous preliminaries?  Why could she not even close her eyes?

Crumb raised the knife and held the blade close above her bared neck.  A shudder ran through her, and then the door crashed open and a man sprang into the room.  It was Billy Byrne.  Through the window he had seen what was passing in the interior.

His hand fell upon Crumb’s collar and jerked him backward from his prey.  Dink seized the shotgun and turned it upon the intruder; but he was too close.  Billy grasped the barrel of the weapon and threw the muzzle up toward the ceiling as the tramp pulled the trigger.  Then he wrenched it from the man’s hands, swung it once above his head and crashed the stock down upon Dink’s skull.

Dink went down and out for the count—­for several counts, in fact.  Crumb stumbled to his feet and made a break for the door.  In the doorway he ran full into Bridge, winded, but ready.  The latter realizing that the matted one was attempting to escape, seized a handful of his tangled beard, and, as he had done upon another occasion, held the tramp’s head in rigid position while he planted a series of blows in the fellow’s face—­blows that left Crumb as completely out of battle as was his mildewed comrade.

“Watch ’em,” said Billy, handing Bridge the shotgun.  Then he turned his attention to the woman.  With the carving knife that was to have ended her life he cut her bonds.  Removing the gag from her mouth he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to the little horsehair sofa that stood in one corner of the parlor, laying her upon it very gently.

He was thinking of “Maw” Watson.  This woman resembled her just a little—­particularly in her comfortable, motherly expansiveness, and she had had a kind word and a cheery good-bye for him that morning as he had departed.

The woman lay upon the sofa, breathing hard, and moaning just a little.  The shock had been almost too much even for her stolid nerves.  Presently she turned her eyes toward Billy.

“You are a good boy,” she said, “and you come just in the nick o’ time.  They got all my money.  It’s in their clothes,” and then a look of terror overspread her face.  For the moment she had forgotten what she had heard about this man—­that he was an escaped convict—­a convicted murderer.  Was she any better off now that she had let him know about the money than she was with the others after they discovered it?