ed to know all her old friends except Elspeth, who was still
Alice to her. Seldom now did she put her hands over her ears, or see
horrible mountains marching with her. She no longer remembered, save
once or twice when she woke up, that she had ever been out of Thrums.
To those who saw her casually she was Grizel--gone thin and pale and
weak intellectually, but still the Grizel of old, except for the fixed
idea that Double Dykes was her home.

"You must not humour her in that delusion," David said sternly to
Tommy; "when we cease to fight it we have abandoned hope."

So the weapon he always had his hand on was taken from Tommy, for he
would not abandon hope. He fought gallantly. It was always he who
brought her back from Double Dykes. She would not leave it with any
other person, but she came away with him.

"It's because she's so fond o' him," Corp said.

But it was not. It was because she feared him, as all knew who saw
them together. They were seen together a great deal when she was able
to go out. Driving seemed to bring back the mountains to her eyes, so
she walked, and it was always with the help of Tommy's arm. "It's a
most pitiful sight," the people said. They pitied him even more than
her, for though she might be talking gaily to him and leaning heavily
on him, they could see that she mistrusted him. At the end of a sweet
smile she would give him an ugly, furtive look.

"She's like a cat you've forced into your lap," they said, "and it
lies quiet there, ready to jump the moment you let go your grip."

They wondered would he never weary. He never wearied. Day after day he
was saying the same things to her, and the end was always as the
beginning. They came back to her entreaty that she should be allowed
to go home as certainly as they came back to the doctor's house.

"It is a long time, you know, Grizel, since you lived at Double
Dykes--not since you were a child."

"Not since I was a child," she said as if she quite understood.

"Then you went to live with your dear, kind doctor, you remember. What
was his name?"

"Dr. McQueen. I love him."

"But he died, and he left you his house to live in. It is your home,
Grizel. He would be so grieved if he thought you did not make it your
home."

"It is my home," she said proudly; but when they returned to it she
was loath to go in. "I want to go home!" she begged.

One day he took her to her rooms in Corp's house, thinking her old
furniture would please h