eak to her still, father," said Rhoda, as she drew a chair upon which
she leaned her sister's body, and ran down full of the power of hate and
loathing to confront Sedgett; but great as was that power within her, it
was overmatched by his brutal resolution to take his wife away. No
argument, no irony, no appeals, can long withstand the iteration of a
dogged phrase. "I've come for my wife," Sedgett said to all her
instances. His voice was waxing loud and insolent, and, as it sounded,
Mrs. Sumfit moaned and flapped her apron.

"Then, how could you have married him?"

They heard the farmer's roar of this unanswerable thing, aloft.

"Yes--how! how!" cried Rhoda below, utterly forgetting the part she had
played in the marriage.

"It's too late to hate a man when you've married him, my girl."

Sedgett went out to the foot of the stairs.

"Mr. Fleming--she's my wife. I'll teach her about hating and loving. I'll
behave well to her, I swear. I'm in the midst of enemies; but I say I do
love my wife, and I've come for her, and have her I will. Now, in two
minutes' time. Mr. Fleming, my cart's at the gate, and I've got business,
and she's my wife."

The farmer called for Mrs. Sumfit to come up and pack Dahlia's box, and
the forlorn woman made her way to the bedroom. All the house was silent.
Rhoda closed her sight, and she thought: "Does God totally abandon us?"

She let her father hear: "Father, you know that you are killing your
child."

"I hear ye, my lass," said he.

"She will die, father."

"I hear ye, I hear ye."

"She will die, father."

He stamped furiously, exclaiming: "Who's got the law of her better and
above a husband? Hear reason, and come and help and fetch down your
sister. She goes!"

"Father!" Rhoda cried, looking at her open hands, as if she marvelled to
see them helpless.

There was for a time that silence which reigns in a sickchamber when the
man of medicine takes the patient's wrist. And in the silence came a
blessed sound--the lifting of a latch. Rhoda saw Robert's face.

"So," said Robert, as she neared him, "you needn't tell me what's
happened. Here's the man, I see. He dodged me cleverly. The hound wants
practice; the fox is born with his cunning."

Few words were required to make him understand the position of things in
the house. Rhoda spoke out all without hesitation in Sedgett's hearing.

But the farmer respected Robert enough to come down to him and explain
his views of his duty