standing at the stove, and watched the
back of his head with hate in her eyes. He could eat like that, when he
stood committed to a terrible thing!

It was not until late in the day that it began to dawn on her how she
was responsible. She was getting stronger then and more able to think.
She followed as best she could the events of the last months, and she
saw that, as surely as though a malevolent power had arranged it, the
thing was the result of her infatuation for Graham.

She was in despair, and she began to plan how to get word to Graham of
what was impending. She scrawled a note to Graham, telling him where she
was and to try to get in touch with her somehow. If he would come around
four o'clock Herman was generally up and off to the grocer's, or to
Gus's saloon for his afternoon beer.

"I'll break a window and talk to you," she wrote. "I'm locked in when
he's out. My window is on the north side. Don't lose any time. There's
something terrible going to happen."

But several days went by and the postman did not appear. Herman had put
a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door, and her hope of finding a
second key to fit the door-lock died then.

It had become a silent, bitter contest between the two of them, with two
advantages in favor of the girl. She was more intelligent than Herman,
and she knew the thing he was planning to do. She made a careful survey
of her room, and she saw that with a screw-driver she could unfasten the
hinge of her bedroom door. Herman, however, always kept his tools locked
up. She managed, apparently by accident, to break the point off a knife,
and when she went up to her room one afternoon to be locked in while
Herman went to Gus's saloon, she carried the knife in her stocking.

It was a sorry tool, however. Driven by her shaking hand, there was a
time when she almost despaired. And time was flying. The postman, when
he came, came at five, and she heard the kitchen clock strike five
before the first screw fell out into her hand. She got them all out
finally, and the door hung crazily, held only by the padlock. She ran
to the window. The postman was coming along the street, and she hammered
madly at the glass. When he saw her he turned in at the gate, and she
got her letter and ran down the stairs.

She heard his step on the porch outside, and called to him.

"Is that you, Briggs?"

The postman was "Briggs" to the hill.

"Yes."

"If I slide a letter out under the door, w