that almost betrayed her hiding-place.

"I tell thee it is thy fault," cried Brossard's angry voice, drawing
nearer the barn.

"But I tried," began Jules, timidly.

His trembling excuse was interrupted by Brossard, who had seized him by
the arm. They were now on the threshold of the barn, which was as dark
as a pocket inside.

Joyce, peeping through the crack of the door, saw the man's arm raised
in the dim twilight outside. "Oh, he is really going to beat him," she
thought, turning faint at the prospect. Then her indignation overcame
every other feeling as she heard a heavy halter-strap whiz through the
air and fall with a sickening blow across Jules's shoulders. She had
planned a scene something like this while she worked away at the lantern
that afternoon. Now she felt as if she were acting a part in some
private theatrical performance. Jules's cry gave her the cue, and the
courage to appear.

As the second blow fell across Jules's smarting shoulders, a low,
blood-curdling wail came from the dark depths of the barn. Joyce had not
practised that dismal moan of a banshee to no purpose in her ghost
dances at home with Jack. It rose and fell and quivered and rose again
in cadences of horror. There was something awful, something inhuman, in
that fiendish, long-drawn shriek.

Brossard's arm fell to his side paralyzed with fear, as that same hoarse
voice cried, solemnly: "Brossard, beware! Beware!" But worse than that