for an instant. That
she was half distraught and wholly morbid, he saw from her look, and the
sight awakened that indomitable pity which had served always as a medium
for the biting irony of life.

"To save my soul I can't see what satisfaction you would have got out of
that," he remarked.

"I did--I did. They helped me to be spiritual minded," wailed Judy with
the incoherence of complete despair. If her infatuation was ridiculous,
it occurred to Abel that her courage, at least, was sublime. From a
distance and with brighter hair, she might even have been mistaken for
a tragic example of immortal passion. The lover in his blood pitied her,
but the Calvinist refused to take her seriously.

"Well, if I were you, I'd go in and lie down," he said feeling that it
was, after all, the best advice he could offer her. "You're sick, that's
what's the matter with you, and a cup of tea will do you more good than
hugging that old mill-stone. I know you can't help it, Judy," he added
in response to a gesture of protestation, "you were born that way, and
none of us, I reckon, can help the way we're born." And since it is
easier for a man to change his creed than his inheritance, he spoke in
the tone of stern fatalism in which Sarah, glancing about her at life,
was accustomed to say to herself, "It's like that, an' thar wouldn't be
any justice in it except for original sin."

Judy struggled blindly to her feet, and still he did not touch her. In
spite of his quiet words there was a taste of bitterness on his lips,
as though his magnanimity had turned to wormwood while he was speaking.
After all, he told himself in a swift revulsion of feeling, Judy was his
wife and she had made him ridiculous.

"I know it's hard on you," she said, pausing on the threshold in the
vain hope, he could see, that some word would be uttered which would
explain things or at least make them bearable. None was spoken, and her
foot was on the single step that led to the path, when there came the
sound of a horse running wildly up the road through the cornlands,
and the next instant the young roan passed them, dragging Mr. Mullen's
shattered rig in the direction of the turnpike.

"Let me get there, Judy," said Abel, pushing her out of his way,
"something has happened!"

But his words came too late. At sight of the empty gig, she uttered a
single despairing shriek, and started at a run down the bank, and over
the mill-stream. Midway of the log, she stumbl