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 "You know he came here to find proofs to justify him in ordering your death?"

"I heard you taunt him with it just now; but I can protect myself."

"I did not come to kill him for that."

"I care nothing for your motives; I will not have him killed here," I returned in the same stern, decisive tone.

She eyed me viciously, like a baulked tigress.

"You will not?" The words came in a low, strenuous, menacing voice that fitted with her tigress look.

"No, I will not;" and at that, without another word, she flung herself upon me, wrought up to such a pitch of madness in her reckless yearning to do the deed she had come to do upon Kolfort that she would have plunged the knife into my heart to clear me out of her path. She struggled with the strength and frenzy of madness, turning the knife as I clutched and held her wrist until it gashed my hand, while she strained every nerve and muscle of her lithe, active body in the desperate efforts to get past me and wrench her wrist from my grip.

She was now in all truth a madwoman.

It was a grim, fierce, gruesome struggle, for her strength was at all times far beyond that of a woman, and her mania increased it until I could scarce hold her in check. Had I been a less powerful man she would certainly have beaten me; but I thrust her away again, though I could not get the dagger from her, and was preparing myself for a renewal of the struggle, when, with a scream for help that resounded through the house, she turned her wild eyes on me, now gleaming with her madness, and hissed:

"He seeks the proofs to kill you! He shall have