class="c24">The Priest Takes a Hand  

185 XVII ’Twixt Cup and Lip   200 XVIII Blind Alleys   214 XIX The Spider And The Fly   225 XX In the Footsteps of Quesada   237 XXI The Hidden Cave   253 XXII The Taste of Rope   265viii XXIII The Spider Snaps   274 XXIV Those in the Hut   286 XXV What the Stars Saw   296 XXVI A Lucky Bad Shot   308 XXVII Dangerous Shadows   320 XXVIII A Dash for Port   330 XXIX The Open Door Closes   341

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ILLUSTRATIONS

	PAGE
With pretty art and a woman’s instinctive desire to please, she had placed the candle on a chair and assumed something of a pose.	Frontispiece
“For the love of God, do not rouse her. She sees! She sees!”	46
Minute after minute, Stubbs stared at this sight in silence.	278
Sorez stared straight ahead of him in a frenzy. Then the shadow sprang, throwing his arms about the tall figure.	304

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THE WEB OF THE
GOLDEN SPIDER

In his aimless wanderings around Boston that night Wilson passed the girl twice, and each time, though he caught only a glimpse of her lithe form bent against the whipping rain, the merest sketch of her somber features, he was distinctly conscious of the impress of her personality. As she was absorbed by the voracious horde which shuffled interminably and inexplicably up and down the street, he felt a sense of loss. The path before him seemed a bit less bright, the night a bit more barren. And although in the excitement of the eager life about him he quickly reacted, he did not turn a corner but he found himself peering beneath the lowered umbrellas with a piquant sense of hope.

Wilson’s position was an unusual one for a theological student. He was wandering at large in a strange city, homeless and penniless, and yet he was not unhappy in this vagabondage. Every prowler in the dark is, consciously or unconsciously, a mystic. He is in touch with the