efore he could do so, the door was
flung open and Min herself confronted him on the threshold.

She did not now have on the man's overcoat which she had worn at the
store, and her neat, close-fitting home-spun dress revealed to
perfection the full, magnificent curves of her figure. Her splendid
hair was braided about her head in a glossy coronet, and her dark eyes
were ablaze with ill-suppressed anger. Again Telford was overcome by a
sense of her wonderful loveliness. Not all the years of bondage to
ill-temper and misguided will had been able to blot out the beauty of
that proud, dark face.

She lifted one large but shapely brown hand and pointed to the gate.

"Go!" she said threateningly.

"Mrs. Palmer," began Telford, but she silenced him with an imperious
gesture.

"I don't want any of your kind here. I hate all you ministers. Did you
come here to lecture me? I suppose some of the Corner saints set you
on me. You'll never cross my threshold."

Telford returned her defiant gaze unflinchingly. His dark-blue eyes,
magnetic in their power and sweetness, looked gravely, questioningly,
into Min's stormy orbs. Slowly the fire and anger faded out of her
face and her head drooped.

"I ain't fit for you to talk to anyway," she said with a sort of
sullen humility. "Maybe you mean well but you can't do me any good.
I'm past that now. The Corner saints say I'm possessed of the devil.
Perhaps I am--if there is one."

"I do mean well," said Telford slowly. "I did not come here to reprove
you. I came to help you if I could--if you needed help, Mrs. Palmer--"

"Don't call me that," she interrupted passionately. She flung out her
hands as if pushing some loathly, invisible thing from her. "I hate
the name--as I hated all who ever bore it. I never had anything but
wrong and dog-usage from them all. Call me Min--that's the only name
that belongs to me now. Go--why don't you go? Don't stand there
looking at me like that. I'm not going to change my mind. I don't want
any praying and whining round me. I've been well sickened of that.
Go!"

Telford threw back his head and looked once more into her eyes. A long
look passed between them. Then he silently lifted his cap and, with no
word of farewell, he turned and went down to the gate. A bitter sense
of defeat and disappointment filled his heart as he drove away.

Min stood in the doorway and watched the sleigh out of sight down the
river road. Then she gave a long, shivering si