We only' want to help ourselves, as I told her.' The two laughed -with a horrible relish of the joke, which I understood too well. With my heart in my ears T listened a few moments more, learn ing, with indiscribable sensations,! hat tht?y were in the neighborhood for the expr-ss purpose of robbing ...Clayton Hall. I groped my way back to my room somehow, wishing, how vainly, how desperately, that I were safe at home ; thinking in a wild, strange hopelessness of father's dear face, and of the girls, and all that I loved. I did not yield to d'spiir, however ; something inspir. d me to open the window ; and this accomplished with infinite care and caution, I saw that with an effort I could get on to ihe roof of the porch, and might then be able to swing myself to the ground by means of the ivy. Better the lonely lanes, the desertpd, silent field*, than this horrible house 1 If I betrayed the slightest suspicion on the morrow, who knew what would bn my fate at these unscrupulous hands'? I dared not risk it; to my h df-distracted mind safety alone lay in flight. I could not face these miscreants and act as if I believed them honest * the ordeal was beyond my strength. Holding my breath, I climbed out, gained the porch, and next minute had plunged ankle-deep in the rich, moist earth of the flower-bed 13 , which muffled the sound of the drop which I was obliged to make I scrambled over the low hedge, and then fled along the lane as rapidly as my trembling limbs would bear me. But 1 had not gone many yards before I had a. gwifter step than my : own, and felt my arm suddenly grasped from behind. I could not scream ; I looked ovor my shoulder gasping, and so into the eyes cf a young man with a dark gipsy face. (To he continued.) limn iii ii inn lii. 