e gripped her
wrist. "Whether alive or dead, there will be no escape from me. I
will follow you, track you in all you do, and if I go underground
shall fasten on you, in spirit, and drag you underground as well.
When you married me you became mine forever."

A little noise made both turn.

At the door was Sally Rocliffe, her malevolent face on the watch,
observing all that passed.

"What do you want here?" asked the Broom-Squire.

"Nuthin', Jonas, but to know what time it is. Our clock is all
wrong when it does go, and now, with the cold and snow, I suppose,
it has stopped altogether."

Sally looked at the clock that stood in the comer, Jonas turned
sharply on his heel, took his hat, and went forth into the backyard
of his farm.

"So," said Mrs. Rocliffe, "my brother is in fear of his life of
you. I know very well how he got the shot in his elbow. It was not
your fault that it did not lodge in his head. And now he dare not
take his medicine from your hands lest you should put poison into
it. That comes of marrying into a gallows family."

Then slowly she walked away.

Mehetabel sank into the window seat.

However glorious the snow-clad, sunlit world might be without it
was nothing to her. Within her was darkness and despair.

She looked at her wrist, marked with the pressure of her husband's
fingers. No tears quenched the fire in her eyes. She sat and gazed
stonily before her, and thought on nothing. It was as though her
heart was frozen and buried under snow; as though her eyes looked
over the moor, also frozen and white, but without the sun flooding
it. Above hung gray and threatening clouds.

Thus she sat for many minutes, almost without breathing, almost
without pulsation.

Then she sprang to her feet with a sob in her throat, and hastened
about the house to her work. There was, as it were, a dark sea
tumbling, foaming, clashing within her, and horrible thoughts
rose up out of this sea and looked at her in ghostly fashion and
filled her with terror. Chief among these was the thought that
the death of Jonas could and would free her from this hopeless
wretchedness. Had the bullet indeed entered his head then now she
would have been enduring none of this insult, none of these
indignities, none of this daily torture springing out of his
jealousy, his suspicion, and his resentfulness.

And at the same time appeared the vision of Iver Verstage. She
could measure Jonas by him. How infinitely inferior in