cat playing with a mouse, but not yet sure of his quarry.

Ellen came to know hours when she was weak--weak physically, mentally,
spiritually, morally--when under the sheer weight of this frightful and
growing burden of suspense she was not capable of fighting her misery,
her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same time wholly
withstanding Colter's advances.

He would come into the cabin and, utterly indifferent to Tad Jorth, he
would try to make bold and unrestrained love to Ellen. When he caught
her in one of her unresisting moments and was able to hold her in his
arms and kiss her he seemed to be beside himself with the wonder of
her. At such moments, if he had any softness or gentleness in him,
they expressed themselves in his sooner or later letting her go, when
apparently she was about to faint. So it must have become
fascinatingly fixed in Colter's mind that at times Ellen repulsed him
with scorn and at others could not resist him.

Ellen had escaped two crises in her relation with this man, and as a
morbid doubt, like a poisonous fungus, began to strangle her mind, she
instinctively divined that there was an approaching and final crisis.
No uplift of her spirit came this time--no intimations--no whisperings.
How horrible it all was! To long to be good and noble--to realize that
she was neither--to sink lower day by day! Must she decay there like
one of these rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and
ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use? What did it matter? Who
would ever think of Ellen Jorth? "O God!" she whispered in her
distraction, "is there nothing left--nothing at all?"

A period of several days of less torment to Ellen followed. Her uncle
apparently took a turn for the better and Colter let her alone. This
last circumstance nonplused Ellen. She was at a loss to understand it
unless the Isbel menace now encroached upon Colter so formidably that
he had forgotten her for the present.

Then one bright August morning, when she had just begun to relax her
eternal vigilance and breathe without oppression, Colter encountered
her and, darkly silent and fierce, he grasped her and drew her off her
feet. Ellen struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived
her of strength. And that paralyzing weakness assailed her as never
before. Without apparent effort Colter carried her, striding rapidly
away from the cabins into the border of spruce trees at the foot