g him by day at least,
must be making his suffering less difficult to endure. For she
understood that there was still much for him to do, although the
hill-country was already ringing with his victory. And throughout
every hour she hated herself most of all for that spirit behind the
doubt which was swinging her, pendulum-like, between brain's reason and
heart's desire.

Barbara needed her mother in those days of wretchedness, for she came
and went as blind to the helpless misery which followed her always from
the eyes of her father as she was heedless of who might read the misery
in her own. She turned a chill, set face to the one attempt to help
made by Miriam Burrell, who, at the first inkling of violence on the
river and possible danger to Garry Devereau, had come rushing overnight
into the hills, purposed never to leave them again unless it was with
him, as the wife of the man she loved. Barbara wanted her mother, and
when that occurred to Miss Sarah, the latter could no longer continue
in passive sympathy. Without compunction or loss of more time, she
reversed a decision at which she had arrived herself only a short time
before. For Miss Sarah had stopped campaigning. Caleb, with fire in
his eye, had brought her the story of how "her boy" Steve had broken
Harrigan with his bare hands. She had had little to say concerning
that episode, but her brother, noting that she did not condemn it as
regrettable, wondered too that he had never noticed before how hard his
sister's eyes could be. The news that Barbara was lost had reached
Miss Sarah hours before Allison's private car brought the girl and her
father and Hardwick Elliott back to Morrison. Thereupon, with her
first glimpse of Barbara's wanly mute and suffering face, she had
pieced the details together; she had told herself, with sorrow and
understanding in her heart, that she must no longer interfere. And
now, though she did summon Barbara to her, the end of the second
endless day, it was with no thought for evasion or finesse. Barbara
obeyed that summons reluctantly. In the face of an almost sullen light
in the girl's eyes when she entered on lagging feet, the older woman
knew that she could not have persisted in such an attempt, even had she
planned to employ it. Additional warning was not needed, but Barbara's
first words told her that the hour was long past for such methods.

At first the girl refused to sit down. She wandered aimlessly around