And a good thing, too. I
know you--trust me for seeing through your sly ways, my lady. You
expected to take my son from me with the price of your ginger hair,
you ugly baldpate."

Rachel's head grew light, and with the cry of a bated creature she
turned upon the old mother in a torrent of hot words. "You low, mean,
selfish soul," she cried, "I despise you more than the dirt under my
feet."

Worse than this she said, and the old woman called on Stephen to
hearken to her, for that was the wife he had brought home to revile
his mother.

The old witch shed some crocodile tears, and Stephen lunged in
between the women and with the back of his hand struck his wife
across the face.

At that blow Rachel was silent for a moment, trembling like an
affrighted beast, and then she turned upon her husband. "And so you
have struck me--me--me," she cried. "Have you forgotten the death of
Patricksen?"

The blow of her words was harder than the blow of her husband's hand.
The man reeled before it, turned white, gasped for breath, then
caught up his cap and fled out into the night.

CHAPTER III.

THE LAD JASON.

Of Rachel in her dishonor there is now not much to tell, but the
little that is left is the kernel of this history.

That night, amid the strain of strong emotions, she was brought to
bed before her time was yet full. Her labor was hard, and long she
lay between life and death, for the angel of hope did not pull with
her. But as the sun shot its first yellow rays through the little
skin-covered windows, a child was born to Rachel, and it was a boy.
Little joy she found in it, and remembering its father's inhumanity,
she turned her face from it to the wall, trying thereby to conquer
the yearning that answered to its cry.

It was then for the first time since her lying-in that the old mother
came to her. She had been out searching for Stephen, and had just
come upon news of him.

"He has gone in an English ship," she cried. "He sailed last night,
and I have lost him forever."

And at that she leaned her quivering white face over the bed, and
raised her clenched hand over Rachel's face.

"Son for son," she cried again. "May you lose your son, even as you
have made me to lose mine."

The child seemed likely to answer to the impious prayer, for its
little strength waned visibly. And in those first hours of her
shameful widowhood the evil thought came to Rachel to do with it as
the baser sort among her peop