of ineffable content. Her lips were parted
a little; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a day-dream or a
light slumber. After she lay down there, she seemed not to have
moved an eyelash. The hand she held was covered with dark stains,
where she had kissed it.

But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told only
half the story. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies from
Frank's alfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the interlacing
shadows; diving and soaring, now close together, now far apart;
and in the long grass by the fence the last wild roses of the year
opened their pink hearts to die.

When Ivar reached the path by the hedge, he saw Shabata's rifle
lying in the way. He turned and peered through the branches,
falling upon his knees as if his legs had been mowed from under
him. "Merciful God!" he groaned.

Alexandra, too, had risen early that morning, because of her anxiety
about Emil. She was in Emil's room upstairs when, from the window,
she saw Ivar coming along the path that led from the Shabatas'.
He was running like a spent man, tottering and lurching from side
to side. Ivar never drank, and Alexandra thought at once that one
of his spells had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad
way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to
hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man
fell in the road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he
bowed his shaggy head. "Mistress, mistress," he sobbed, "it has
fallen! Sin and death for the young ones! God have mercy upon
us!"

PART V. Alexandra

I

Ivar was sitting at a cobbler's bench in the barn, mending harness
by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm.
It was only five o'clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had
come up in the afternoon, bringing black clouds, a cold wind and
torrents of rain. The old man wore his buffalo-skin coat, and
occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the lantern. Suddenly
a woman burst into the shed, as if she had been blown in, accompanied by
a shower of rain-drops. It was Signa, wrapped in a man's overcoat
and wearing a pair of boots over her shoes. In time of trouble
Signa had come back to stay with her mistress, for she was the only
one of the maids from whom Alexandra would accept much personal
service. It was three months now since the news of the terrible
thing that had happened in Frank Shabata's orchard