nt. One thing she speedily discovered regarding him. He went in
deadly fear of his master, and invariably crept about like a whipped
cur in his presence.

"Why is it?" she said to Curtis once.

But Curtis only shrugged his shoulders in reply.

He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about
him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under
Mercer's heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent,
unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was
some time before she felt herself to be on terms of intimacy with him.
He was an excellent cook; and he and Beelzebub between them made her
duties remarkably light. In fact, she spent most of her time riding with
her husband, who was fully occupied just then in overlooking the
shearers' work. She also was keenly interested, but he never suffered
her to go among the men. Once, when she had grown tired of waiting for
him, and followed him into one of the sheds, he was actually angry with
her--a new experience, which, if it did not seriously scare her, made
her nervous in his presence for some time afterwards.

She had come to regard him as a man whose will was bound to be
respected, a man who possessed the power of impressing his personality
indelibly upon all with whom he came in contact. There were times when
he touched and set vibrating the very pulse of her being, times when her
heart quivered and expanded in the heat of his passion as a flower that
opens to the sun. But there were also times when he filled her with a
nameless dread, when the very foundations of her confidence were shaken,
and she felt as a prisoner behind iron bars. She did not know him, that
was her trouble. There were in him depths that she could not reach,
could scarcely even realize. He was slow to reveal himself to her, and
she had but the vaguest indications to guide her. She even felt
sometimes that he deliberately kept back from her that which she felt to
be almost the essential part of him. This she knew that time must
remedy. Living his life, she was bound ultimately to know whereof he was
made, and she tried to assure herself that when that knowledge came to
her she would not be dismayed. And yet she had occasional glimpses of
him that made her tremble.

One evening, after they had spent the entire day in the saddle, he went
after supper to look at one of the horses that was suffering from a
cracked hock. Curtis was b