had told
him herself was equally unthinkable, for his wrath would be visited upon
her own head.

"My child! My child!" she cried, "you don't have to be told what he will
do t' me."

There was a long pause while she sobbed. The pause became a compelling
one; some one had to speak.

"I can't help it, ma," Elizabeth said doggedly after a time.

"Oh, but you don't know what it means. Come on to th' house. I can't work
no more, an' I've got t' talk this thing out with you."

They picked up the pails and the hoe with which they had been covering the
hills and went to the house, carrying a burden that made a potato-planting
day a thing of no consequence.

The mother busied herself with the cob fire as she argued, and Elizabeth
put away the old mittens with which she had protected her hands from the
earth which never failed to leave them chapped, before she picked up the
broom and began an onslaught on the red and fluffy dust covering the
kitchen floor.

"You see, You'll go off t' teach an' won't know nothin' about it,
an'--an'--I'll have it t' bear an'----" The pause was significant.

Mrs. Farnshaw watched her daughter furtively and strained her ears for
signs of giving up. At last Elizabeth said slowly:

"I'm as sorry as I can be, ma, but--I'm twenty years old, and I've _got_
to go."

There was no doubting that her mind was made up, and yet her mother threw
herself against that stone wall of determination in frantic despair.

"Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie! I can't live an' have you do it. You don't know,
child, what I have to bear."

"Now look here, ma; you won't let me have things out openly with pa and
come to an understanding with him, and when I told you four years ago that
you ought to leave him if you couldn't live with him peaceably you talked
as if I had committed some sort of sin. You and pa are determined to fuss
it out and I can't help it, and I've sacrificed four good years to you and
the interest is bigger than it ever was. I haven't helped you one bit. If
you want to go on living with him You'll do it in your own way, but if
your life is unbearable, and you want to leave him, I'll see that you are
provided for. The law would give you a share of this----"

The noise of the broom and of their voices had prevented them from hearing
any other sounds, but a shadow fell across the middle door and Josiah
Farnshaw entered the kitchen a blazing picture of wrath. Before he could
speak, however, the dog on the d