He was roused by the sound of her voice and the single stroke of the clock back of her. It was one, and he could have sworn that they had been sitting here less than fifteen minutes.

“I must go to Ben now,” she said. “It is time to give him more medicine.”

“I will go with you.”

“No,” she decided, “I think I had better go alone. A stranger might frighten him.”

He hesitated with an uneasy sense of foreboding, but she moved past him determinedly and went up the stairs, leaving him alone with the haunting picture upon the wall. He moved nearer to study it more in detail. He caught a trace of resemblance to the boy but none to the girl. The features were more rugged than those of young Arsdale, and the forehead was broader and higher, but the mouth was the same thin, tense, and yet with no strength of jaw behind it. The cheek bones were rather high and the eyes set deep but over-close together. It was a face, thought Donaldson, of which great things might be expected, but upon which nothing could be depended. The man would move eratically but brilliantly, like those aquatic fireworks which dart in burning angles along the face of the water scarlet serpents shooting to the right, the left, in their gorgeous irresponsible course towards the dark.

As he stood there Donaldson thought he heard the soft tread of feet in the hall and the click of the outside door as it was opened. He listened intently, but he heard nothing further. He crossed the library and looked out. The door was ajar. He flung it open and peered down the driveway; there was nothing to be seen but the dark mass of hedge bounding the yard. He went to the foot of the stairs and listened; there was no sound above.

The wind may have blown open the door if it had been unlatched, and the imagined footsteps in the hall may have been nothing but the rustling of the hangings, but still he was not satisfied. He ventured up the first flight and paused to listen. He thought he heard a movement above, but was not quite sure. He neither wished to intrude nor to frighten her unnecessarily, but he called her name. At first he received no response, and then, with a sense of relief that made him realize how deep his fear had been, he saw her come to the head of the stairs. The light came only from the sick room, so that he could not see her very clearly. She took a step towards them, and then he noticed that she swayed and clutched the banister. He was at her side in three bounds.

“What is the trouble?” he demanded.

“If you will steady me a bit,” she answered.

“Are you hurt?”

“Just dazed a little. Did you stop him?”

“Stop him? Then some one did go out?”

“As I opened the door Ben rushed by me and I fell down. I hoped you might see him and hold him!”

“I was at the other end of the library. He must have stolen out on tiptoe. But you are faint.”

“I am stronger now.”

She started down the stairs with the help of the banister, holding herself together with remarkable self control. As they came into the light he saw that she was very pale, but she insisted that she needed nothing but a breath of cool air. He helped her to the door and here she sat down for a moment upon the step.

“I might take a look around the grounds,” Donaldson suggested.

“It is quite useless. He is not here.”

“Then you have an idea where he has gone!”

She hesitated a moment.

“Yes,” she answered.

He waited, but she ventured nothing further.

“I want you to feel,” he said quietly, “that you may call upon me for anything you wish done. My time is my own quite my own. I place it at your service.”

She turned to study his face a moment. It was clean and earnest. It bade her trust. Yet to ask him to do what lay before her was to bring him, a stranger, into the heart of her family affairs. It was to involve her in an intimacy from which instinctively she shrank. But pressing her close was the realization of the imminent danger threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling no time for nice shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her brother’s safety. As Donaldson’s eyes met hers, she felt ashamed that she had hesitated even long enough for these thoughts to flash through her brain.

“The boy uses opium,” she said without equivocation.

The bare naming of the drug rolled up the curtain before the whole tragedy which had been suggested by the portrait in the library; it explained every detail of this wild night except her presence here practically alone with the crazed young man. It accounted for her objection to waiting in the drugstore; it solved the mystery of her fear of the city shadows. Had he suspected this, he would no more have allowed her to go up those stairs alone than he would have permitted her to go unescorted into the cell of a madman.

“I ’m sorry for him,” he murmured. “Then he has gone straight to Mott Street?”

“I ’m afraid so. He has been there once before.”

“The habit has been long upon him?”

“It is inherited. This is the third generation,” she admitted, turning her head aside in shame.

“But he himself ”

“Only after his father’s death. The father feared this and watched him every minute. He died thinking the danger was passed, but he left me a prescription which had been of help to him. It was given him by our old family physician who has since died. Mr. Barstow knew Dr. Emory and so has always prepared it for me.”

“How long this last time did he go without the drug?”

“It is three months since the first attack. This medicine tided him over five days. He was nervous to-night and begged me to go out to dinner with him. I ’m afraid it was unwise the lights and the music excited him.”

“But you have n’t been here alone with him?”

“There is Marie.”

“Two women alone with a man in that condition it is n’t safe.”

“You don’t understand how good he has been. He has struggled hard. He has allowed me to lock him up to do everything to help him. He has never been like this before.”

“It is n’t safe for you,” he repeated. “Are there no relatives I may summon?”

“None,” she answered. “I am his cousin his sister by adoption. There are no other relatives.”

“No friends?”

“I would rather fight it out alone,” she answered firmly. “I don’t wish my friends to know about this,” she added hastily, as though to avoid further discussion along this line.

“It was careless of me to leave the door open as I went in.”

“It was lucky for you. He might have ”

“Don’t!” she shuddered.

He waited a moment.

“You are brave,” he declared, “but this is too big a problem for you to manage. He should have been placed in the hands of a physician.”

“No,” she interrupted. “No one must know of this. I trust you to tell no one of this.”

He thought a moment.

“Very well. But in order to locate him now, it will be necessary to call in the help of the police.”

“The police!” she exclaimed in horror. “No! You must promise me you will not do that.”

She rose to her feet all excitement.

“They would not arrest him,” he assured her. “They would simply hold him until we came for him.”

“I would rather not. I would rather wait until he comes back himself than do that.”

He could not understand her fear, but he was bound to respect it.

“Very well,” he answered quietly. “But I have a friend whom I can trust. You do not mind if I enlist his help?”

“He is of the police?” she asked suspiciously.

“He is a friend,” he replied. “It is as a friend he will do this for me.”

“Oh,” she answered confused, “I don’t know what to do! But I feel that I can trust you I will trust you.”

“Thank you. Then I must begin work at once. There is a telephone in the house?”

Her face brightened instantly. He seemed so decisive and sure. The fact that he was so immediately active, that he did not wait until daylight, when conditions would be best, but began the search in the face of apparent impossibility, brought her immediate confidence. She liked a man who would, without quoting the old saw, hunt for a needle in a haystack.

She directed him to the telephone, and he summoned a cab. He returned with the question,

“Do you know how much money he had?”

“Money? He had none.”

“Then,” said Donaldson, “won’t he come back of himself? Opium is one thing for which there is no credit.”

“I ’m afraid not. He has been away before without money, and ”

She stopped as abruptly as though a hand had been placed over her mouth. Her face clouded as though from some new and half forgotten fear. She glanced swiftly at Donaldson, as though to see if he had read the ellipsis.

When she spoke again it was slowly, each word with an effort.

“My pocket-book was upstairs. It is possible that he borrowed.”

Donaldson knew the meaning of that. Kleptomania was a characteristic symptom. Victims of this habit had gone even further in their hot necessity for money.

“Perhaps,” she suggested hesitatingly, “perhaps this search to-night may inconvenience you financially. I wish you to feel free to spend without limit whatever you may find helpful. We have more than ample funds. Unfortunately I have on hand only a little money, but as soon as I can get to my bank ”

“I have enough.” He smiled as a new meaning to the phrase came to him. “More than enough.”

He glanced at the clock. Over half of his first day already gone. He heard the crunching wheels of the taxicab on the graveled road outside. Hurrying into the hall he took one of Arsdale’s hats he had lost his own in the machine and slipped into his overcoat. Still he paused, curiously reluctant to leave her. He did not feel that there was very much waiting for him outside, and here he would have been content to live his week in this old library. He had glimpsed a dozen volumes that he would have enjoyed handling. He would like to spread them out upon his knee before the fire and read to her at random from them. Yes, she must be there to complete the library. He was getting loose again in his thoughts.

She was looking at him anxiously.

“I think we shall find him,” he said confidently. “At any rate I shall come back in the morning and report.”

“This seems such an imposition ” she faltered.

“Please don’t look at it in that light,” he pleaded earnestly. “I feel as though I were doing this for an old friend.”

“You are kind to consider it so.”

“You see we have been in the inner woods together.”

She smiled courageously.

“Good night. I wish you were better guarded here,” he added.

He held out his hand quite frankly. She put her own within it for a moment. He grew dizzy at the mere touch of it. It was as though his Lady of the Mountains had suddenly become a living, tangible reality. The light touch of her fingers was as wine to him. They made the task before him seem an easy one. They made it a privilege. She thought that he was making a sacrifice in doing this for her when she was granting him the boon of returning upon the morrow.

“Good night,” he said again.

He turned abruptly and opening the door stepped out into the cab without daring to look back.