e to conditions that her immense
fatigue and wearied brain made her accept, dully, stupidly, since she
had lost all power of resistance. It was something like the enforced
peace of a wounded thing that has just been able to crawl back into
its burrow and has found the rest its body craves for.

In the midst of so large a family one could not aspire to the lone
possession of a bed. The little girl she had held in her lap had been
placed beside her, not without many apologies from Mrs. Papineau. In
the darkness she could feel the little warm body nestling against her,
and hear the soft and regular breathing. It was comforting since it
brought a feeling that the little one protected her, in some strange
way, and was leading her in paths of darkness with a little warm hand
and a heart that was unafraid and confident of the morrow's shining
sun. Very soon there came a restless sleep which at first was filled
with uncanny visions, from which she awakened once or twice in fear.
But at last came entire surcease from suffering as the brain that had
been overwrought ceased to toil.

In the meanwhile Hugo had slowly made his way back to his shack. If
his arm hurt he had now little consciousness of it. The thing that
disturbed him most was that girl's unshakable belief in his villainy.
Was she really insane? He had had no opportunity to communicate that
thought to Mrs. Papineau. But then, after her arrival, she had seemed
so absolutely rational in all that she had said and done that the idea
had, for the time being, passed away from his mind. And what if, at
least in part, she had spoken the truth? What if some amazing
distortion of reality had truly and honestly given her these beliefs,
through evidence that must be all against him? The words she had
spoken before starting for the Papineaus', and the further ones
uttered on the tote-road, while he rested, held a drama so poignant
that it struck a chill to his heart. She might, after all, have been
speaking the truth as she had been misled into believing it! But then
there must be some amazing conspiracy at work, some foul doings whose
objects utterly escaped him and which left him staring at the little
lamp now burning on his table, as if it might perhaps have revealed
some key to the amazing problem.

Was it possible that a weak and slender woman could actually be
compelled to carry on a fight against hunger and illness, with never a
friend on earth, until she was finally so b