He finally wrenched his arm free and struck her a savage blow, aimed at her head but falling on her shoulder, which sent her down on her knees and then back against the fire. He thought he had stunned her, and raised his arm again when she sprang up, tore the paper out of his grasp and pressed it with her hand down into the coals beside her. As she did so, for the first time she raised her voice and shrieked:
“Mr. Barron! Mr. Barron! Come, come! Oh hurry!”
From the hall Harney heard a movement and an answering shout. With the cries echoing through the room he beat her down against the grate, and tore the paper, curling with fire on the edges, from her hand. With it, he dashed through the open sash, a shiver of glass following him.
Almost simultaneously, Barron burst into the room. He had been reading and had fallen asleep to be waked by the shrieks of the girl’s voice, which were still in his ears. The falling of broken glass and a rush of cold air from the opened window greeted him. Piled on the table and scattered about the floor were gold pieces. Mariposa was kneeling on the rug.
“He’s got it!” she cried wildly, and struggling to her feet rushed to the window. “He’s got it! Oh go after him! Stop him!”
“Got what?” he said. “No, he hasn’t got the money. It’s all there.”
He seized her by the arm, for she seemed as if intending to go through the broken window.
“Not the money—not the money,” she shrieked, wringing her hands; “the paper—the certificate! He’s got it and gone, this way, through the window.”
Barron grasped the fact that she had been robbed of something other than the money, the loss of which seemed to render her half distracted. With a hasty word of reassurance, he turned and ran from the room, springing down the stairs and across the hall. In the instant’s pause by the window he had heard the sound of feet on the steps below and judged that he could get down more quickly by the stairs than by the limb of the tree.
But the few minutes’ start and the darkness of the night were on the side of the thief. The roar of the rain drowned his footsteps. Barron ran this way and that, but neither sight nor sound of his quarry was vouchsafed to him. The man had got away with his booty, whatever it was.