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HE thing was managed with an ingenuity that Alan termed devilish: it was indisputably Machiavellian.

The lovers had come down from the North in hot haste and the shadow of death. Two days of steady travelling, by canoe, by woods trail, by lake steamer, wore to a culmination through this endless afternoon on the train from Moosehead Lake. No sort of privacy or comfort was attainable in cars crowded to suffocation with fretful, sweating people, homeward bound from a week-end holiday over the Fourth.

Nor was it possible to discriminate, to guess whether or not they rode in the company of spies and enemies. Chin in hand, indifferent to discomfort, Alan brooded, his eyes fixed on this woman whom he loved, who had taken her life in her hand to save his life.

She lay back listlessly in the chair beside his, visibly wilting in the heat blast, her hair in disarray, her eyes closed, fair cheeks faintly flushed, pulses 47