his wild
hiding-place. The endurance of this torture exhausted her as nothing had
ever exhausted her before; yet all the time she never doubted but that
the pain was his, and that she was merely a spectator.

She soothed him at last, not by gentleness and caresses--no such
communication ever passed between them--but by plain, practical, hopeful
suggestions spoken out clearly in the intervals of his whining. At
length she esteemed it time to use the spur instead of stroking him any
longer. "Get up on the tree, father, and I will give you the rest of the
things when you are fixed on the branch. If Toyner's stirring again
before I get home, he'll find means to keep me from coming to-morrow
night. Climb up now. I'll give you the things. There--there isn't enough
of the morphia drops to get you to sleep, only to make you feel easy;
and here's the strips of blanket I've sewed together to tie yourself on
with. It's nice and soft--climb up now and fix yourself. It's Toyner
that will catch me, and you too, if I don't get back. Look at the
moon--near the middle of the sky."

She established him upon the branch again with the comforts that she had
promised, and then she gave him one thing more, of which she had not
spoken before. It was a bag of food that would last, if need be, for
several days.

He took it as evidence that she had lied to him in her assurance that
she could return the next night. As she moved her boat out of the secret
openings among the dead trees, she heard him whining with fear and
calling a volley of curses after her.

That her father's words were all profane did not trouble Ann in the
least. It was a meaningless trick of speech. Markham meant no more at
this time by his most shocking oaths than does any man by his habitual
expletive. Ann knew this perfectly. God knew it too.

Yet if his profanity was mechanical, the man himself was without trace
of good. There was much reason that Ann's heart should be wrung with
pity. It is the divine quality of kinship that it produces pity even for
what is purely evil. Ann rowed her boat homeward with a hard
determination in her heart to save her father at any cost.

CHAPTER V.

An hour later the small solitary boat crept up the current of the
moonlit river. The weary girl plied her oars, looking carefully for the
nook under the roots of the old pine whence she had taken the boat.

She saw the place. She even glanced anxiously about the ground
immediate