she had entered upon this ordeal in perfect health. But her
willingness outsped her powers; and when the snow had spared her by
driving her into the cave, she fairly staggered and groped and leaned
against the wall, and knew that if she should now collapse she would
never rise again. But even in that climax of her suffering, when for a
moment she dared not move, in fear of toppling over on the floor, and
could not keep back her sobs, there was an answer ready when Haig
called to her across the cave.

"What is it, Marion?" he asked softly.

"Tuesday!" she answered chokingly.

"What about Tuesday?"

"He's a good horse."

"Yes."

"He never balked or--hesitated. He never threw me--but once, and that
wasn't his fault. It was--"

She stopped. And out of what black depths, and across what vistas of
hope and despair and love and anguish, she looked back to that scene
in the golden summer, in the Forbidden Pasture.

"Yes, I remember," said Haig.

Then she told him brokenly how she had just said farewell to Tuesday;
how he stood at the foot of the slope, thin as a specter, belly-deep
in snow, his nose lifted inquiringly toward her.

"Good-by, Tuesday!" she cried; and fled stumbling up the slope, her
hands on her ears to shut out his plaintive whinny.

Haig watched her narrowly, and was not deceived. Through the first few
days of Marion's struggles he had lain on his pallet in almost
complete indifference, in full acceptance of the fate that awaited
them; not callous to her sufferings, but resigned, as he thought, to
endure what could not be prevented. Having resolved to humor her, he
went from the extreme of resistance to the extreme of submission, and
hardened his heart to endure what galled and humiliated and degraded
him. Then anger seized him once more,--anger at Marion, anger at
himself, anger at Thursby, anger at circumstances, chance and destiny:
blinding and suffocating anger. To have been brought to this shameful
state, to lie there watching a woman, a mere girl, perform these
menial tasks for him--for him who had execrated and despised and
scorned her sex--for him who had accepted such services grudgingly
even from men--for him who had stalked around the world in defiant
independence, indebted to no man and obligated to no woman: this was
odious and intolerable. And it must be tolerated!

Marion knew nothing of this fiery ordeal through which Haig came. Even
in the fiercest and most maddening moment of