oved Martin
Howe and would marry him; but it was quite another matter for him to reach
a corresponding conclusion. To her vengeance was an antiquated creed, a
remnant of a past decade, which it cost her no effort to brush aside.
Martin, on the contrary, was built of sterner stuff. He hated with the
vigor of the red-blooded hater, fostering with sincerity the old-fashioned
dogmas of justice and retribution. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth" was a matter of right; and the mercy that would temper it was not
always a virtue. More often it was a weakness.

To be caught in Ellen Webster's toils and own himself beaten would, Lucy
well understood, be to his mind a humiliating fate.

Only a compelling, unreasoning love that swept over him like some mighty
tidal wave, wrenching from its foundations every impeding barrier, could
move him to surrender; and who was she to arouse such passion in any
lover? She was only a woman human and faulty. She had indeed a heart to
bestow, and without vain boasting it was a heart worth the winning; she
held herself in sufficient esteem to set a price on the treasure. But was
it jewel enough to prompt a man to uproot every tradition of his moral
world for its possession?

Sadly she shook her head. No, Martin would never be lost in a mood of such
over-mastering love as this for her. If he made a proposal of marriage, it
would be because he was spurred by impulses of justice and pity; and no
matter how worthy these motives, he would degenerate into the laughing
stock of the community the instant he began to carry out the terms of the
will and reconstruct the wall. She could hear now the taunts and jests of
the townsfolk. Some of them would speak in good-humored banter, some with
premeditated malice; but their jibes would sting.

"So you're tacklin' that wall in spite of all you said, are you, Martin?"

"Ellen Webster's got you where she wanted you at last, ain't she,
Martin?"

"This would be a proud day for the Websters, Martin!"

There would even be those who would meanly assert that a man could be made
to do anything for money.

Ah, she knew what the villagers would say, and so, too, would Martin. How
his proud spirit would writhe and smart under the lash of their tongues!
Neither pity nor love for her should ever place him in a position of such
humiliation.

Before he was confronted by the choice of turning her out of doors, or
marrying her and making himself the butt of the cou