With bated breath he heard Halloran enter the outer apartment.

And he heard his impatient, muttered imprecations as he fumbled about for matches, seemingly without finding any.

“This is where I put them,” exclaimed Halloran, with an oath, “but they are not here now.”

After a moment’s pause his voice broke the awful stillness, exclaiming: 

“Ah! here they are!  I imagined they were not far away.  One should always know where to put his hands on such things, even in the dark.  A whole bunch of ’em; I did not remember that I had so many!”

For the next few moments Lester heard him walking to and fro, apparently dragging heavy articles over the floor, and he knew that he was piling pieces of boards together in the middle of the room to start the blaze.

His blood fairly ran cold in his veins at the thought.

The moments that followed seemed the length of eternity.

Each instant he expected to hear the dull scratching of the matches, quickly followed by the swift, crackling blaze.

With all his strength he strove to rend asunder the heavy steel chain, but it resisted his every effort.

“God in heaven! am I to die here like a rat in a trap?” he groaned, the veins standing out like knotted whipcord on his forehead, the perspiration pouring down his face like rain.

For some moments there was a strange, unaccountable silence in the outer room.

Lester paused in his efforts to wrench the iron bands asunder which bound his wrists, wondering what that ominous silence meant.

The suspense was terrible, yet each moment meant that much of a respite from the horrible fate which awaited him.

What could Halloran be doing?  Surely he had not abandoned his intentions to set fire to the cabin?

It was almost too good to be true.  And yet that awful uncertainty was almost unbearable.

In the outer room Halloran sat quietly thinking over his plans, match in hand, telling himself that he had better perfect them then than wait until he was journeying toward the railway station.

He would take the first train bound for New York, seek Kendale at once, and have an understanding with him before he would disclose to him the fact that Lester Armstrong was effectually out of his way.

“Yes, that is the only course to pursue,” muttered Halloran, and springing to his feet, he struck half of the matches in his package at once, and lighted the pile heaped in the center of the cabin floor.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Halloran meets with his Reward.

In an instant after the match had been applied a fiery tongue of flame leaped to the ceiling, lighting the interior of the cabin with a blinding glare of red light.

Seizing his hat, Halloran dashed from the place and down the road, never pausing until he had reached the fork of the roads.  Then he stopped for breath and looked back over his shoulder.