pulse was feeble but
terrifyingly rapid. It beat--beat--beat in a drum-roll of death. Late
that afternoon he sobbed, and died.

Bea did not know it. She was delirious. Next morning, when she went,
she did not know that Olaf would no longer swing his lath sword on the
door-step, no longer rule his subjects of the cattle-yard; that Miles's
son would not go East to college.

Miles, Carol, Kennicott were silent. They washed the bodies together,
their eyes veiled.

"Go home now and sleep. You're pretty tired. I can't ever pay you back
for what you done," Miles whispered to Carol.

"Yes. But I'll be back here tomorrow. Go with you to the funeral," she
said laboriously.

When the time for the funeral came, Carol was in bed, collapsed. She
assumed that neighbors would go. They had not told her that word of
Miles's rebuff to Vida had spread through town, a cyclonic fury.

It was only by chance that, leaning on her elbow in bed, she glanced
through the window and saw the funeral of Bea and Olaf. There was
no music, no carriages. There was only Miles Bjornstam, in his black
wedding-suit, walking quite alone, head down, behind the shabby hearse
that bore the bodies of his wife and baby.

An hour after, Hugh came into her room crying, and when she said as
cheerily as she could, "What is it, dear?" he besought, "Mummy, I want
to go play with Olaf."

That afternoon Juanita Haydock dropped in to brighten Carol. She said,
"Too bad about this Bea that was your hired girl. But I don't waste
any sympathy on that man of hers. Everybody says he drank too much, and
treated his family awful, and that's how they got sick."

CHAPTER XXVII

I

A LETTER from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said that he had been sent
to the front, been slightly wounded, been made a captain. From Vida's
pride Carol sought to draw a stimulant to rouse her from depression.

Miles had sold his dairy. He had several thousand dollars. To Carol he
said good-by with a mumbled word, a harsh hand-shake, "Going to buy a
farm in northern Alberta--far off from folks as I can get." He turned
sharply away, but he did not walk with his former spring. His shoulders
seemed old.

It was said that before he went he cursed the town. There was talk
of arresting him, of riding him on a rail. It was rumored that at the
station old Champ Perry rebuked him, "You better not come back here.
We've got respect for your dead, but we haven't got any for a blasphemer
and a tr