Dyke Darrel assisted his fair companion to the opening. An instant later she had passed outside.
Then something occurred that quite startled the detective and filled him with intense alarm.
A burning log fell from the side of the cabin with a thud that was sickening. A horrible fear at once took possession of Darrel. With a quick bound he gained the opening, and leaped clear of the burning logs to the ground without.
Turning about he uttered a cry of horror.
Sibyl Osborne lay crushed beneath a black log that was yet smoking with heat. With a herculean effort the detective lifted and flung the log from the poor girl's breast, and then he lifted and carried her beyond the reach of flame and heat, and laid her on a little mound beneath a giant tree.
One glance into the mad girl's face satisfied him of the mournful truth. The falling log had done fatal work, and with his hand clasping hers, Dyke Darrel watched the gasps that grew fainter each moment, until the silence and quietude of eternity rested on all.
"Dead!"
With that one word Dyke Darrel started to his feet and gazed about him. There was a flinty gleam in his keen eyes and a fierce grating of white teeth.
It had been a long time since the railroad detective was moved as at that hour, with the work of human fiends before him.
From the burning cabin his gaze returned to the upturned white face of the dead girl. Pure and lovely as a lily looked the face of the wronged and dead.