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(Thirty -three)
This story was written from the Photoplay by the issue of the MOTION
he officer’s glass was hurled down with a crash. He strode to the door.
“Hell! It is locked. Here, break it down — sword, bayonet, anything !”
• J . STUART •
• BUACKTON •
A wreath of white smoke hung in the still air. A woman sat on the floor, pillowing in her lap the head of her first-born. In her arms she held the youngest one, rocking her gently to and fro, smiling and crooning to her as if she were again a baby.
“How they are rattling and banging on that door!” she complained. “They will wake Dorothy, little Dorothy who is so tired ! And Virginia, too — she is sleeping so soundly ; well, she has had a hard day. Why did we come here? Where are we? Oh, yes, at the Beltons’, of course. We must be going. Dorothy! Dorothy, dear! Strange how still she is and how heavy.”
A sudden, frightened look shot into the tired, questioning eyes, growing into an expression of dumb terror.
“Why doesn’t she answer?”
The loving touch strayed caressingly up and down the slim form, seized a limp hand, and raised it to
her lips. It was cold! She released it and the arm fell, heavy as lead.
‘ ‘Virginia ! ’ ’ She reached over and shook the girl lying so peacefully, with calm, upturned face. Her eyes traveled stupidly over the lithe figure, traveled beyond, and caught the metallic gleam -of a pistol lying on the floor beside her ; traveled further still and stopped, rigidly focused on an ever-widening stain on the carpet — a dark, dread, gruesome stain. Her body stiffened, her eyes glared. For one brief, blinding, crucifying second, sanity returned. They were not asleep : their eyes were closed in death !
Dead ! Both of them. Her last, her all, her babies ! Dead by her own hand.
Those beasts at the door ! She remembered. She struggled to rise, to tear them to pieces with her nails, her teeth.
Then something in the tortured brain snapped, and, leaning her head back, she laughed and laughed and laughed.
same author, and was begun in the November PICTURE MAGAZINE
It was a good, strong door and a first-class lock, but finally it gave, and the officer, with a tigerish snarl, hurled himself thru, the other brutes following close on his heels.
“They are here, my darlings, but fear not. Mother has tricked them. They thought they were clever, but mother was too cunning for them.
“Keep your eyes closed, and they will think you are dead — dead! Ha! ha ! Only sleeping. How we are fooling them ! When they have gone we will steal out and tell father and brother. How they will laugh, too ”
There were some young faces in the group at the door — faces on which shame or sympathy should be found ; but none was there.
Had they mothers and sisters of their own ? Evidently not, for no sign of compassion could be traced in the brutal masks that covered the faces God “made in His own image.” They too, are laughing — not the wild laugh of insanity, but the cruel laugh of fiends incarnate.
Their captain was not laughing. His coarse lips were twisted into a vicious sneer. The back of his neck grew dull red. The veins on his forehead swelled with rage as he realized that the little woman had tricked him and had made a fool of him before his
^ 5‘ATTLE. CRA PEACE