revolver and slipped a fully loaded clip into her little friend.

Then picking up the emerald ring from the table, and her dressing-case
from behind the cushions, she crept gently across the room, and
gently--oh! so very gently, opened the door which yielded noiselessly
to her touch, and stepped into a deserted hall only to recoil violently
from something at her feet.

Across the threshold lay a girl.

The agonised eyes in the beautiful dark face gazed up in terror at
Jill, whilst a little hand searched weakly for a jewelled plaything of
a dagger at her waist.

"Oh! Poverina!" said Jill, as she knelt to raise the little head, and
then stared in horror at the girl's shoulders and the hem of her satin
trousers.

Some expert hand had flicked the delicate flesh off the back in a
criss-cross pattern; what was left of the feet lay in a pool of blood,
the deep red of which stretched across the hall far into the distance,
showing the path along which the child, left by her torturers for dead,
had dragged herself.

"Poor little, little thing!" whispered Jill, as she made to raise the
body in her arms. But the dusky head shook feebly, and a dainty
henna-tipped finger pointed to a window across the hall, and Jill,
feeling herself pushed away ever so slightly, rose as three words were
whispered over and over again: