ne in the sun out in those lands.... Will 'ee shake
hands and let I be a friend to you and your missus as a brother should?"
He held out his hand as he spoke, and Ishmael found himself staring at
it in the uncertain light of the lamps. The next moment a flood of
self-reproach at his own hesitation swept over him; he put out his hand
and took his brother's. Archelaus gave such a vigorous wringing that
Ishmael could not keep back a little exclamation, and his fingers were
numb when they were released.

"Bit too strong, am I?" asked Archelaus with a friendly laugh. "My
muscles have got so tough I don't rightly knaw how hard I grip." He
swung himself up into the cart, and from that elevation looked down at
Ishmael with a nod of farewell.

Ishmael went into the house, where he found Phoebe still sitting in
the parlour, her hands folded on her lap, staring in front of her. She
gave a start when he spoke to her, and when he told her of his pact with
Archelaus chilled him by her scant enthusiasm. They went to bed, and as
they lay side by side in the darkness there was a constraint between
them there had not been even when they had quarrelled or his occasional
fits of irritation had made her rail at him.

As the weeks wore on they both seemed to become used to the occasional
but unwonted presence of Archelaus about the place, though Phoebe
always resented it oddly. Yet it was a friendly presence; he was ready
to help on the farm with advice and even with his strong muscles if need
be, and the world at large was much edified by the reconciliation.

"A gentle little wife like that is such a softening influence" was the
general verdict ... and Ishmael, irked by the strain between them to a
sudden passion of distaste for what he felt had been his weakness, had
instituted what was for those days a startling innovation--that of a
separate bedroom for himself. He guessed that Phoebe almost hated him
for it, yet he had come suddenly to that point when he sickened at
over-intimacy, when he realised that the passion in him had betrayed
him, so that he felt the only salvation for his mind lay in crushing it.
He had sold himself, but at least he could refrain from taking his
price. So he told himself and so he meant, yet when, as on a night when
Phoebe, shedding resentment for a wistful tenderness, had won him to a
triumph of passion once again, there was mingled with his sense of
having failed himself a certain relief in the acknowledgm