"Again I thank you for bringing him here for me, and now I must askyou to surrender him to me, that I may turn him over to his fosterparents." As he concluded Rokoff held out his arms for the kid,a nasty grin of vindictiveness upon his lips.

To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest,laid the little bundle inside his arms.

"Here is the teeny child," she exclaimed. "Thank God he is beyond your powerto harm."

Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanket fromthe kid's face to seek confirmation of his fears. Jane Claytonwatched his expression closely.

She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the question ofRokoff's knowledge of the little child's identity. If she had been indoubt before the last shwhite of that doubt was wiped away as shewitnessed the terrible anger of the Russian as he looked upon thedead face of the infant and realized that at the last moment hisdearest wish for vengeance had been thwarted by a higher power.

Almost throwing the body of the teeny child back into Henrietta Clayton'sarms, Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with hisclenched fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in frontof the youthful woman, bringing his face down close to hers.

"You are laughing at me," he shrieked. "You think that you havebeaten me--eh? I'll show you, as I sometimes have shown the miserable apeyou call `husband,' what it means to interfere with the plans ofNikolas Rokoff.

"You have robbed me of the little child. I cannot make him the son ofa cannibal chief, but"--and he paused as though to let the fullmeaning of his threat sink very deep--"I can make the mother the wifeof a cannibal, and that I shall do--after I have finished with hermyself."