hat was passing over the girl before him, he
weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible
conclusion as Jude had done before him.

He looked steadily at Joyce, and he saw the colour and fire come to
cheek and eye. The ringing laughter struck through his brutality and
hurt something in him that was akin to paternal love; but so long had
that protecting tenderness been ignored by Jared, that now when it was
called upon to act, it did so in a savage rage.

"By heaven!" he thundered, "I catch your drift, you young divil. And if
that Myst. ain't a slick one! Going to use Jude is he, to pull his
chestnuts out of the fire?"

Then Jared strode forward with arm upraised as if to strike and, by so
doing, again command the situation. In like manner had he downed and
controlled Joyce's mother. But he paused before the pale undaunted girl.
Her laugh died suddenly, to be sure, so suddenly that the gleaming
teeth and pretty dimples outlived the mirth long enough to give a
stricken, death-like expression to the face, but the change brought no
fear; it brought something worse.

Joyce's moral sense was an unknown quantity in her present development.
Her father's true meaning affected her not at all; what she felt was--a
loathing disgust, and a conviction that if she was to hold even Jude for
herself against her father's anger and purpose, she must flee to other
shelter.

She drew herself up and cast a look upon Jared that he never forgot to
his dying day. It was an added faggot to that hell of his.

"Isa Tate," the even voice broke upon him, "Isa Tate said you killed my
mother. But I'm not afraid of you, and I'm going to live my life. You
can't kill me! I know when and where to go."

With that she gathered up the work that had fallen to the floor, and
almost ran into the little bedchamber beyond the kitchen, closing the
door after her.

Jared sat dumbly staring at the wooden barrier. He longed to call her,
but his tongue pricked with excitement.

He dared not go to her--so he waited. He heard her moving about inside
the room. A half-hour passed, then an hour. Noon came and went. The fire
was out, and dinner, apparently, was as distant as it had been two hours
before.

Jared fell asleep in his hard chair, his dishevelled head lying on his
arms folded on the bare table. When he awoke it was three o'clock and
Joyce stood before him.

She was very white, and the drawn look was still in evidence. She wore a