Five minutes afterward a hissing whistle was answered by a snort from the patient blood-hound, which had watched so long at the door, his light feet scratched their way down the slippery oaken stairs, and once more Margaret was alone.
She had been saved through a night of peril such as turns the jetty locks of youth to the lustrous white; she had been saved to rush for aid and have the murderer arrested with the pistol still in his hand.
She was a free woman once more, and God had been kind to her this long dread night.
She rose from her paralyzing attitude and approached her little bed to sink on her knees beside it and pour out her full heart of gratitude to Heaven, but she only went a little way and fell on her face and fainted.
And the first sun-ray of another dawning smote across the weary old world, flushing its icy bosom, and stole through the hole in the shutter, and touched the ceiling, thus casting a reflected beam, like a faint smile, upon the unconscious face of the orphan girl.
CHAPTER XX.
THE IMPOSTOR FOILED.
At ten o'clock of the morning Mrs. Chetwode was knocking at Miss Walsingham's bedroom door.
"Excuse me, miss, for disturbing you, but the colonel is here, and wishes most particular to see you."