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The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly by Unknown
page 100 of 174 (57%)
elder brother. They were muttering curses, low but deep.

"To have risked so much for nothing!" whispered one. "Can she have it,
or was the old fool jesting with us?"

"It's a jest that has cost him dear," answered the other, as he watched
his brother search the girl's clothes and then slip his murderous hands
beneath her pillow. He withdrew them empty.

"Shall we settle her?" he asked, "or let her go? Is it not best to be
on the safe side?"

But the smooth-shaven one said, decisively: "Let her alone; we have
enough to answer for. See, she is sound asleep, and if not, it will be
easy to find out before she reaches Brussels how much she knows. Let
her be."

Babette lay like a log, stirring neither hand nor foot. In that awful
moment, when her life or death was trembling in the balance, her mother
love, that divine instinct implanted in every woman's breast, came to
her and saved her. She knew that if she moved her baby's life was
gone--her own she hardly cared about just then. But those little limbs
that were nestling so soft and warm against her own, and that little
flaxen head that was cuddled against her arm, for their sake she
was brave.

[Illustration: "SHE LAY MOTIONLESS"]

So she lay motionless and listened, fearing that the men would hear even
the quick, heavy throbs of her heart. But they did not. They searched
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