and swampy grounds
with here and there a stretch of water reflecting the blue of the sky.

After a moment's silence he began again.

There was something in Silas's mentality that seemed to have come up from
the world of automata, something tireless and persistent akin to the
energy that drives a beetle over all obstacles in its course, on or round
them.

"That's all very well," said he, "but you can't always go on caring for
Pinckney."

"Can't I?" said Phyl.

"No, you can't. He's going to get married and then where will you be?"

Phyl, staring over the horses' heads as though she were staring at some
black prospect, set her teeth. Then she spoke and her voice was like the
voice of a person who speaks under mesmerism.

"I cared for him before he was born and I'll care for him after I'm dead
and there's no use in bothering a bit about it now. _You_ couldn't
understand. No one can understand, not even he."

The road here bordered a stretch of waste land; Silas gazed over it, his
face was drawn and hard.

Then he suddenly blazed out.

Laying the whip over the horses and turning them so sharply that the
phaeton was all but upset he put them over the waste land; another touch
of the whip and they bolted.

Beyond the waste land lay a rice field and between field and waste land
stood a fence; there was doubtless a ditch on the other side of the
fence.

"You'll kill us!" cried Phyl.

"Good--so," replied Silas, "horses and all."

She had half risen from her seat, she sat down again holding tight to the
side rail and staring ahead. Death and destruction lay waiting behind that
fence, leaping every moment nearer. She did not care in the least.

She could see that Silas, despite his words, was making every effort to
rein in, the impetus to drive to hell and smash everything up had passed;
she watched his hands grow white all along the tendon ridges with the
strain. The whole thing was extraordinary and curious but unfearful, a
storm of wind seemed blowing in her face. Then like a switched out light
all things vanished.

CHAPTER IV

Twenty yards from the fence the off side wheel had gone.

The phaeton, flinging its occupants out, tilted, struck the earth at the
trace coupling just as a man might strike it with his shoulder, dragged
for five yards or so, breaking dash board and mud guard and brought the
off side horse down as though it had been poleaxed.

Silas, with the luck that always fell to him in