weather!” he burst out with a hoarse chuckle, as he gave vent to the customary oath of the Germans, “I shouldn’t know myself if I were to see my face now. Come look at me, girl,” he added, seizing her by the wrists and dragging her round towards him. “Would you believe it was the same person who stepped into the carriage some hour ago?”
“No, sir,” she faltered out, and then averted her head again as quickly as she could, for hideous as the fellow had appeared to her before, he looked now even more repulsive than ever, the colour of his hair being so light that his head seemed to be absolutely bald all over, and had more the semblance of a skeleton skull than the cranium of a living being, while the broken black stumps of teeth that had been previously hidden by the terrier-like fringe of hair on the upper lip, were now visible with hateful distinctness every time he grinned.
“What strange mania was on the man?” she asked of herself, as she took up her book and pretended to read, so that she might fix her eyes upon some other object than the hateful one before her. “Why should he be bent on removing every bit of hair from his head and face, and that at a time when the snow lay deep upon the ground, and the frost glistened, like ground-glass, upon every window-pane? Why, too, should he have forced her to cut the locks from him, when in a short while he could have had it done in Cassel by a proper person? Oh, yes, there was no other solution to the riddle but insanity—some wild sudden caprice that the miserable deranged creature had no power to resist.” But the maiden’s reverie was soon put an end to by the man asking her, as he let down the window to toss to the wind the lumps of hair that lay heaped at the bottom of the carriage, saying, the while, “What on earth do you take me for, Fraulein?”
Helen Boyne was so startled with the apparent sagacity of the tone in which the question was asked, that she started, as if she fancied some other person had put the question to her, and then replied, without taking her eyes from the book, “You Germans, sir, have a saying that only English people and madmen travel in first-class carriages in this country.”
“Soh!” replied the man, closing the window; “you are the English person, and I—,” but he broke off suddenly, adding, “You are mistaken, Fraulein; I am no lunatic, but have a purpose to serve, and for the carrying out of my object it is necessary, before reaching Cassel, that I beg another little favour at your hands.”
“Merciful Heaven!” thought the girl; “what fresh indignity is now to be put on me?”
“Come, there is no reason for any further fear, for what I am about to ask,” said the man, “is merely a promise from you.”
The girl, though somewhat relieved, still sat in terrible suspense, awaiting the issue. Nor was this in any way lessened when she beheld him once more grasp the revolver that still lay on the cushion at his side.
“Now, listen to me, Fraulein; you must swear to me,” he continued, “by all your hopes of happiness in this life, and of salvation hereafter, that you will not breathe a word of what has occurred to-day in this carriage, until a month has passed, and then you have my permission—ay,” he added, with a snap of the fingers, “even to publish it in the newspapers, if you will. Come, now swear to me.”
Helen Boyne hesitated, for she had made up her mind, directly she reached Cassel, to report the whole of the circumstances to the guard, and to demand that he should see her protected for the rest of her journey.
“You hesitate to take the oath, do you?” cried the fellow savagely. “Now hear me out, young lady; this pistol is loaded in every barrel, and if you do not take the oath I have enjoined, one of the bullets puts an end to you, and another to myself. So give me your solemn oath that you will not breathe a word nor give so much as a hint to the officials at Cassel as to the description of your fellow-traveller, or whither he was going, or what he had compelled you to do.”
Helen saw by the determined manner of her companion that there was no hope for her but to give the solemn promise he demanded of her, so she murmured, as distinctly as she could, owing to the fright that still possessed her, for she saw the man’s finger was once more on the trigger of the revolver which he held in his hand, “You have nothing to fear from me, sir.”
“Ay, but swear it,” he cried. “Have you nothing sacred about you by which to enforce the oath?” and then rudely throwing her cloak open, he discovered a little golden cross hanging from her neck. “Swear upon this token, by all your hopes of redemption, that you will keep silent, and I have done.”
“I do,” answered the girl; and as the man forced the little cross to her lips, she kissed it as a pledge of the sacredness of her vow. Then, to her great delight, she beheld the man begin to repack his travelling-bag, and to stow away the terrible pistol once more, as well as the mirror and the scissors, into the side-pocket from which he had originally drawn them; and when she heard the lock snap she felt as if some heavy incubus had been removed from her bosom, and she were waking up from an awful nightmare dream.
The next minute the man was busy costuming himself as when he had entered the carriage; the fur cap that fitted as close as a helmet, when the ear-lappets were tied under the chin, was once more resumed, and the long woollen comforter wound round and round the neck, and drawn close up to the nose, until it looked like a clumsy red respirator covering the lower part of the face.
“In a moment we shall be at Cassel, Fraulein, and then, be assured, if you break your oath,” he went on, while he scowled with a terrible menace at the girl, “there will be no hope of your escaping my vengeance wherever you may be,” and before the train had fully stopped, he sprang on to the broad stone platform, and hurried into the refreshment room.
Helen Boyne was too weak to be able to move from the carriage, for she felt that if she attempted to rise from it she must stagger like one after a long fever; nor could she even give heed to the crowd that kept shuffling along in their high fur-