oad as usual. What was the old man up to? He would be doing
some mischief [Pg 268] some day, that was certain. Seized with an
unaccountable uneasiness, Mikolai groped in the dark passage for the
door-handle. "_Psia krew!_" Of course, it was locked on the inside. He
knocked; then he called, "Father!" He rattled the handle. "The deuce,
why can't you open?"

Still no answer, and no bolt was withdrawn.

He shook the door with all his strength. "I shall break the door open
if you don't unlock it at once."

The door creaked and groaned, and Mikolai's loud voice echoed through
the house, so that one would have thought it would have awakened the
dead--bat there was no sound in the room.

Then a fear gripped him; what should he do now? He was still pondering
when he heard his stepmother's voice.

Mrs. Tiralla had gone to bed, but she had not slept. Her face had burnt
like fire, for she had been rubbing and washing it, so as to wash the
kisses off which she had been obliged to put up with in the dark
passage. Her forehead pained her as though there were a fresh scar on
it, for the man had strained her so forcibly to his breast that his
watch-chain had left a mark there. Oh, that stigma! She passed her hand
over it again and again, but however much she rubbed it did not
disappear. She wrung her hands in impotent fury. But then she clenched
her teeth; no, no complaint, for she had done it for Martin's sake. Was
it not a joy in spite of all this agony to think that she was suffering
for his sake? Who could sympathize with her feelings? No one except the
Lord. He had wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane; He had endured
Judas's kiss.

"O Lord," she raised her hands in the dark to the picture on the wall
of the Saviour holding His flaming [Pg 269] heart in His hand, "Thou
art acquainted with every suffering, Thou seest my sufferings, have
mercy!"

It was probably the first time in her life that Mrs. Tiralla had not
used the prescribed form of prayer, that her heart had cried out in its
own words. Then she whispered, "Martin, Martin," as if the beloved name
were a form of conjuration, and stretched out her arms longingly in her
cold, dark room. Oh, how warm and bright it had been at Starydwor!
Suddenly a smile spread itself over her troubled face; it was as though
a feeling of sweet peace had come to her from afar, and had told her
that it would be warm and bright again. The certainty of this in the
near future consoled her and