The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1909-02-04
CHAPTER xvI.-(continued.)

. ~ q q SItllSlCi lIiolIltliLr 4 Tic
pushed Revere Jack. He staggered and
fell against g piece of furniture, while
the young man, disengaging himself
stepped back, quickly opened his Span
lsh knife, then, with a bound, caught
Revere, shook him, and holding the
knife uplifted, said:
hast willed it,"
1t was at this instant that Revere,
whose hands We're contracted, dug his
nails into the assassin's neck-the nails
M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still
red with blood.
Prades, who had come there either to
supplicate or threaten, now a only
one thought, hideouS and f~erociouS-to
Kill. He did not reason. 1t was no more
than an unclaimed instinct. The noise
OIL the organs upon the boulevard,
which accompanied with their Inu-
steal, dragging notes this avage scene
like a to a melodrama at the
theater, he did not hear. The whole in
tensity of his life seemed to be con
centrated in his fury, in his hand
armed with the knife. He threw HIM
self on Rover He struck the flesh,
opening the throat, as across the water
among the gauchos he had been accus-
toned to kill sheep or cut the troat of
an OK.
Revere staggered, wavered, freed
from the hand which held him, and
Trades, stepping back, looked at him.
Livid, the dying man, seemed to live
only In his eyes. He had cast upon the
murderer a last meaning look. Now,
IN a sort of supreme agony he looked
around. His eyes searched for a sup
port, for aid-yes, they called, while
from that throat terrible sound is
sued.
Prades saw with a kind of fright
Revere, with a superhuman tragic eff
fort, step back, staggering like a
drunken man, pull with his poor con-
tracted lands from above the chimney
piece an object which the murder had
not noticed, and upon which, with an
ardent, ~prayerful expression, he fixed
his eyes, stammering some quick, in
artfculate words which Prades could
not hear or understand.
1t seemed to Prades that between his
victim and himself there was a wit
ness, and whether he thought Of the
value of the stones imbedded in the
frame or whether he wished to take
from Revere this last support in his
distress, he went to him and attempted
to tear the portrait from his hands.
But an extraordinary strength seemed
to come to the dying. mar n Rovere
resisted, fastening his eyes Upon the
portrait, casting upon 1t a living flame,
like the last flare of a dying lamp, N
with this last, despairing, agonizing
o the %ex-consul breathed his last.
He fell. Prades tore the portrait from
the fingers which clutched it. That
frame, He gould sell it. He picked up
here and there Some pieces which
seemed to him of value, as If on a pill
laying tour of the prairies. He was
about to enter the library where the
safe was when the noise of the opening
of the entrance door awakened his
trapper's instinct. Someone was COM
Ing. Who it could be was of little inn
p%ortance. To remain was to expose
himself, to be at once arrested. The
corpse once seen, the person would cry
aloud, rush out, close the door and
send for h police.
Hesitating between a desire to pi1lage
and the necessity for fight, Prades did
not wait long to decide. Should he
hide? Impossible! Then. stepping back
to the salon door. he f1attened himself
as much as possible against the wall
and waited until the door should be
opened, when he would be completely
hidden behind 1T. AS Nine. Moniche
stepped into the room and cried out as
she saw Revere lying on the floor,
Prades slipped into the antechamber,
found himself on the landing, closed the
door, rapidly descended the stairs and
stepped out upon the Boulevard dc
Clichy among the passersby, even be-
fore Nine. Moniche. terrified. had called
for help.