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 came. She turned, and with a sudden leap gained the wall, and the next instant, holding him back with her revolver as she reached up with her left hand, she caught at the great metal shield with its encircling cluster of small arms, and wrenched it from its fastenings. It crashed to the floor with a din infernal that, in the night silence, went racketing through the house like the reverberations of an explosion.

"My God, what have you done!" he cried out hoarsely.

"What I said I'd do!" she answered. She was white-faced, frightened at her own act, fighting to maintain her nerve. "You'll go now, I imagine!" she flung at him passionately. "You haven't much time."

"No!" he said. His composure was instantly at command again. "No," he repeated steadily; "not until after you have gone. I refuse—positively—to let you run any such risk as that. It is far too dangerous."

"Yes, you will!" she burst out wildly. "You will! You must! You shall! I—I" The house itself seemed suddenly to have awakened. From above doors opened and closed. Indistinctly there came the sound of a voice. She clenched her hand in anguished desperation. "Go, you—you coward!" she whispered frantically.

"Miss Gray, for God's sake, do as I tell you!" he said between his teeth. "You don't realize the danger. It's not the pursuit. They are not coming down here unarmed after that racket. I know that you came in by that door there. Go out that way. I will play the game for you. I swear it!"

There were footsteps, plainly audible now, out in the main hall.

"Quick!" he urged. "Are we both to be caught? See!" He backed suddenly toward the window.