CHAPTER X

For the dead man lying in the ship's cabin was not named Depew, nor was the living woman lying on the ship's deck named that way.

It was a case of lying right through, and she thought to herself that she had in a measure given the show away.

So she lay thinking. The mantle of night fell gradually and cloaked things.

Shadows were deep. She might steal off the ship in them unseen.

A boat's lantern hung at each end of the gangway, but there appeared to be no one watching her.

There was not. It was not supposed that there was the slightest chance of her running away.

A woman overcome by emotion as she had been does not run away from the recently discovered body of her dead husband.

So the police argued—argued in the dark—in ignorance of the facts, and left her in the dark in fancied possession of them.

Should she go to that cabin with the light, brave it out there, and carry the lie on further?

Or should she steal off in the gradually growing darker night, and escape home?

Home! Her home more than fifty miles away in the village of Oakville.

She determined to do that. Many reasons prompted her to the act.

Her husband had not been on the boat. Another man bearing his name filled his berth.

There was trickery somewhere—but that was no novelty where her husband was concerned. She was unprepared for it, and had made a mistake. Best rectify it by escape.

She did. Cleared the ship without a soul noticing it.

Reached the railway station, and hid herself in a corner of the ladies' waiting room till the Oakville train started. In that train she was carried home.

Her real name? Todd—Susan Todd. Her husband? Josh Todd.

All that was left of the husband was in the cabin of the ship she had left. It had traveled in two portmanteaus.

His had been a checkered career, but at last he had handed in his checks.

How did it happen that he masqueraded before Lawyer Loide as George Depew?

Because he was the right hand of the somewhat illiterate western farmer who bore that name, or as he would himself have described it, his head cook and bottle washer.

George Depew could write his name, and his caligraphic talents ended right there. So he took for assistant Josh Todd.

Josh saw to all the correspondence, opened the letters, read and answered them. His wife, Susan, was the house help.

Between them, they were paid well, and could have put away for the rainy day. But providence was a thing unknown to Josh.

He put nothing away, except an excessive quantity of old Rye. On Saturday nights he went into Oakville, and in the saloon there sat at the table presided over by Mr. Jack Hamblin.

Jack Hamblin was generally the richer by Josh's visits.

Frequent handling of the cards had made him expert in the dealing thereof. He usually dealt.

So Josh—as he figuratively put it—had not a feather to fly with. And he did not like it.

There was farmer George Depew—provident man—putting by a little each year. Not much, but sufficient for his wife and daughter, Tessie, if he should suddenly be beckoned into the next world.

Then one day there came a letter from a London lawyer named Loide, to George Depew.

As usual Josh opened it. He cursed the luck of Depew freely, and then paused—paused to wonder whether he could not make that luck his own.

Susan had been with the Depews when they paid a visit to England many years before. So Josh took counsel with the wife of his bosom, and learned all there was to know about George.

It was a certain thing that on the other side of that wide water—which the rapidity of our ocean grayhounds has made us come to think so narrow—not a living soul could remember George Depew.

That determined Josh. And when he had determined he always went on.

His scheme was simplicity itself. But for lawyer Loide's fears he probably would not have succeeded so well.

Josh told the real George Depew that he had had a little money left him in Europe, and that his attendance the other side was necessary.

Good-hearted, honest old George congratulated him, and willingly acceded to the request for a month's holiday.

He went into New York, bought two portmanteaus, had the initials "G. D." painted on them, and to them transferred the contents of the bags with which he had left the farm.

A certificate of his employer's birth, a bundle of letters directed to him, two cables to the lawyer, a passage on the next outgoing steamer, and he had all the voyage to think of what he could do next.

A shrewd, keen man, he at once saw through the cheating of lawyer Loide—and handled that limb of the law accordingly.

Fear of detection blinded the lawyer; he failed to make the usual precautionary inquiries. Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Susan saw her husband off from New York, and she never saw him again.

She had a cable from him saying which boat he was returning by, and that he had sent a letter to her to be called for at the New York post-office.

She went to New York on the day the home coming steamer was to arrive, and called for the letter sent by the preceding mail. It read:

Josh.

Susan did not comply with the request contained in the postscript. She had read it when she left the post-office, and thrust it into her pocket as she hurried to the pier.

There, the shock of the discovery that her husband was dead, and the double shock of relief and joy to find that the dead man was not her husband, upset her so, that she lost consciousness, and for a time the subsequent proceedings interested her no more.

She came to herself on deck with the letter still in her pocket.

If she stayed in New York there was going to be trouble. She saw that plainly. She must go home and wait for another cable from Josh.

So she went home. And the letter was still in her pocket.

CHAPTER XI

If he wanted to eat, he must earn his food by his labor. It was felt that it was best for Danvers—and best for the friends he had been living on so long.

The friends felt that strongly.

The exile jumped at the idea. He had long wanted to see America.

One of his friends had done business with Depew over certain consignments, and to Depew he wrote a letter introducing Danvers, and asking him to do what he could for the bearer.

Others of his friends purchased for him clothing and outfit generally, and saw him off—with their pockets lighter perhaps, but a strong feeling of relief.

Depew welcomed Danvers heartily.

Strangers were rarely seen in Oakville. Come from the mother country, he was doubly welcome.

Danvers felt that he had dropped on both feet.

Straightway, too, he fell in love with the farmer's daughter, and it must be admitted that his city ways found favor in the eyes of Tessie.

The farmer promised to find him work, and meanwhile put him into the position the supposed to be holiday making Josh had filled.

This was a thing which disturbed Susan.

Days went by and she was still without news from her husband, and here was a stranger—she knew now that he came over in the boat she had been on—filling the post her husband had so long occupied.

She feared, too, lest any of Josh's petty delinquencies should come to light. She knew that his books must bristle with evidence of them.

So things went on for two or three weeks, Susan working herself up to such a state of excitement that at times the blood rushed so to her head that her eyes were blinded to the work she was engaged in.

The acuteness of her agony nearly drove her mad; it arose from the silence which was imposed on her; she dared not make any inquiries.

And then one day she received such a shock that she became mad in real earnest. For she felt convinced that her husband had been murdered, and that Danvers was his murderer.

Did she not at that very moment hold in her hands unquestionable proof of his guilt?

She was standing at the wash-tub when she discovered it. It had been through her hands once before at the weekly wash.

It was simply a flannel undervest, given out with the rest of his washing by George Danvers.

But it bore her private mark, which she had with her own fingers put on to the vest of her missing husband weeks before. It had belonged to and been worn by Josh Todd!

There was no real mystery about it, and if she had opened her mouth the matter would have been made plain to Susan. But her lips were sealed to silence.

She remained with the firm conviction that her husband was dead, and that his murderer was sleeping beneath the same roof as herself.

She became filled with a fiendish desire for revenge. It was impossible for her to give any information which would convince the police and bring about the murderer's punishment, but she was none the less convinced herself.

She could not insure his sitting in the electrocution chair, but that was no reason why he should go unpunished.

But one desire filled her—she hankered for vengeance.

She sought for means of compassing it. She never closed her eyes at night for thinking about it—thinking how to get level with Danvers.

She wanted a life for a life.

The solution of the mystery? Simple enough. Gerald Danvers' things had been got together by his friends. He had only handled them in packing his portmanteau—a portmanteau which bore his initials.

When in the stoke hole on that day of the child's rescue, he had asked one of the sailors to get his portmanteau and handed the keys from his wet trousers. The man had singled out in the hold a portmanteau bearing the initials "G. D." and the key fitting it—it was the ordinary key, one of which will fit hundreds of the cheaper kind of lock—he had taken out an undervest and shirt.

That they were not an accurate fit in no way disturbed Danvers; he had not bought them himself, and he imagined that his friends had jumped at his size.

As a matter of fact, the sailor had opened one of Josh Todd's portmanteaus, which, of course, bore the initials "G. D."

It was all capable of simple explanation, but Susan Todd was not in need of simple explanation. She had a large sized thirst for revenge on just then—a thirst she determined should be quenched.

The woman was mad—absolutely mad; filled with all the cunning which madness proverbially entails.

Mere death would not satisfy her. She must make this murderer suffer. That was why she worried.

She had opportunities for killing him fifty times in a day, for she was strong, and bony, and powerful; and an axe or a chopper would have bought about all she wanted.

But the act itself would give her no pleasure. Her mind was full of the leading up to it.

She wanted the man who had killed her husband to die a slow death by torture, and she was puzzled how to devise this.

She anticipated a pleasure from watching him counting the moments to his death. Three parts of the pleasure of life lies in its anticipation.

Then there came to her an idea. There must surely have been a strain of the old Indian blood in her, for it savored so of those times when the brave was honored who invented the most devilish kind of torture.

The material for her scheme was close at hand, not a mile from the farmhouse—an old, disused water mill.

Disused for want of motor power.

It stood on the banks of what had been a swift, flowing river, but diversion of its course nearer its rise had turned the river into a little stream which could be crossed in almost all parts without water coming over shoe tops. Only in wet weather was it ever deep enough to rise to one's knees.

When it rained above, and the waters gathered, it would come down in a little rush.

Shortly prior to its final abandonment, a new wheel had been put to the mill. That accounted for the wheel being its soundest part—all else was ruin.

It had been disconnected, and the machinery of the mill removed years ago; but still the big paddle wheel rested on its axle, and every time it rained sufficiently to swell the stream above and make the water flow stronger, so assuredly, the wheel would revolve—revolve till the strong flow ceased, and the water trickled again as it was wont to do in dry weather.

How the scheme came into Susan Todd's head it is impossible to say, but it came—came to stop.

She would lure her husband's murderer to the old mill. She had no fear of an inability to do that. There she would overpower him by a blow from behind, which would stun him.

His unconscious form she would drag outside the little window, and tie it with a clothes-line to one of the blades or paddles of the wheel.

The accomplishment of the task the muscles of her brawny arms told her would be simple, and she gloated over the enjoyment she would experience in coming to the mill as often as possible to talk to the gagged and bound man.

She would discuss the weather for his benefit, and let him know whether the glass was high or low—whether rain might be expected.

And then, when the rain came, assuredly she must be there, even if it came in the dead of the night.

She must be there to watch the agony on the upturned face of a starving, thirsty man, an agony bred of a knowledge of what would happen when the water was strong enough to turn the mill wheel.

She wanted to see the mill wheel start; she had watched it before and knew how it acted, and she knew it would act just the same with its human burden.

The water moved it just a little at first, then further, then further, and all the while the bound wretch would be going slowly but surely to that pool of water through which the lower paddles of the wheel always passed.

Half drowned in that, he would be dragged up into air again for the same ghastly performance to commence again.

Oh! it would be beautiful—she hugged herself in the joy of the anticipation.

And when the wheel had ceased whirling, and the waters had gone down, what easier than to cut the bonds, and let the body drop into the pool beneath, buried from human sight forever!

What easier!

CHAPTER XII

"Gerald Danvers has been here nearly a month. He's in love with you—that's plain to be seen. There's no blame to himself for that. You are a very pretty girl."

"Dad!"

"That's so. That don't matter much; and if you are only flirting that wouldn't matter much, either. But the point is—are you? Do you feel that you love him, Tessie?"

She was playing with the seal at the end of his watch-chain, and her eyes were cast down as she answered:

"He's the nicest man round these parts, dad."

"To look at, Tessie—yes. I admit that. He's got the city polish on him. It's a question if that's good though. The bit of veneer on an article of furniture doesn't make the wood beneath any better quality."

"No, but the farm hands, dad! And then at Oakville who is there to talk to?"

"Maybe not polished people, Tessie."

"No, dad, and that's it. Don't think I'm blaming you, dear old daddie, but you see the years you sent me away to boarding-school made a change in me. The girls—I met people of a different class. One must talk, you know, dad, and there isn't a soul for miles round that has an idea beyond the crops."

"I see—I see."

"Don't think I'm finding fault, daddie—not for a moment. I am as happy as possible at the dear old farm. I was born here, and I should like to die here. But one likes to exchange ideas, dad. You might, for instance, circle ten miles round the farm and you would not meet one soul who could tell you what poetry meant."

"And this man, Danvers, he talks well?"

"He is a gentleman, dad."

"Without a dollar to call his own."

"Dad! is he any the less a gentleman for that?"

"The world thinks so, Tessie."

"Let it, dad, I don't; and I know you don't. A man's a man for all that."

"But a poor man, Tessie—in a double sense. I am really sorry to hear you say this."

"What have I said, dad?"

"Nothing, girlie, nothing. But I can read you. You like Danvers?"

She was playing with the charm on the chain again as she answered:

"I don't dislike him, dad."

The old man sighed.

"I have heard you yourself say, dad, that you liked him."

"Ah! but there's a difference in my and your liking. When a woman begins by liking a man, she generally ends up by loving him."

No answer.

"Danvers was sent out to me, Tessie, with a letter of introduction. You read it. By the next mail another letter came. I opened it myself, as I have done all letters since Josh went away. It was from the writer of the letter of introduction."

"Another, dad?"

"No. He repeated that he would be glad if I would do all I could for Danvers, but, above all, I was to make him work, and work hard. That his life up, he had never done a stroke of work, that he had always lived on his friends, that his friends had provided him with an outfit and paid his passage money, and hoped that in a new country, where he had not a single friend, he would be forced to work—work for his living."

"Poor fellow!"

"Tessie!"

"Well, dad, isn't he a poor fellow? Fancy, thousands of miles from a friend, and, as you say, without a dollar of his own. Am I wrong, dad, to sympathize with, and say of him 'poor fellow'?"

The old man stifled a groan.

He was acting badly. He felt that. He was trying to paint this man in repulsive colors, and was but exciting a tender feeling! He was putting his foot into it deeper every step he took.

It is curious how persistently parents force their children into the marriages they are so anxious not to bring about.

Bespatter her lover to a girl, and straightway the girl loves him the more. Call him everything black you can lay your tongue to, and the girl will be framing pretty speeches for future use—to make up to him for it.

"Tessie, think, my girl, you are happy now because you have everything you can reasonably want. Just picture to yourself what your life would be married to a centless man."

"But, dad, why should you think he will always be poor?"

"All his life, Tessie, he has been living on other people."

"But he may reform, dad. You said he was doing the work better than Josh had done it."

"New brooms sweep clean."

"And in a new country, dad, perhaps he has turned over a new leaf."

"Supposing he has, Tessie, what is his future? If he left here, he might get a job as a store clerk; what can he expect to be better? A store clerk with perhaps a dozen dollars a week."

"You are hard on him, dad."

"Come, Tessie, have I been? But for the fact that Josh is away on a holiday, what could I have done with him? There is not an ounce of farm work in him. They send such men out from the mother country—God knows what for—when we want only muscle, strength, and grit."

"He has been useful, dad."

"Useful! And when Josh comes back, what then? I have told him it is only a temporary job, and perhaps that is the reason."

"For what, dad?"

"His making love to you."

"Dad!"

"Oh, I know the world, Tessie, better than you do. He thinks you are a pretty girl, and that if he can make you love him, he is in for a soft thing."

"Oh, dad, you are unjust."

"I would to God he had never come here."

"Dad!"

"It is true. Marry? Of course you'll marry. It's a woman's mission in life. I can't say I have seen the man yet that I think worthy of you, but that is neither here nor there. But I did think you would fall into the hands of a man who had a bit of land of his own to walk on, and a roof of his own to cover him——"

"You are bitter, dad."

"I feel so, girlie. You are so bound up heart and soul in my heart and soul that what affects you affects me. I want to see you happy."

"I know that, dad."

"Tell me, he has not spoken to you of love yet?"

"Not—with his lips, dad—yet."

Then the old man groaned aloud. He knew it was hopeless to talk.

He prayed for the return of Josh that he might have a reasonable excuse for packing off Danvers.

And Josh—all that was left of him—after the inquest had been buried in the city cemetery.

CHAPTER XIII

"You are laughing now," he said.

"You said once you liked to hear me laugh."

"Oh, I mean you are laughing at me. Don't feel sufficient interest in me, I suppose? Please don't say it; I will take it you mean that."

"I think you are very horrid this afternoon."

"I feel so. My feelings are oozing up to the surface, I suppose. And I meant to——"

"To what?"

"Oh, it—it does not matter."

"You talk in—well, I can't understand you."

"Like a man awakening from a sleep. Wits have been wool gathering. I have been dreaming. Accept my apologies, Miss Depew."

"Miss Depew! How dreadfully formal you have grown."

"Blizzard came along, and froze me all up."

"Poor fellow!"

"I am glad you have some sort of feeling for me—if it is only pity."

"Oh, I always sympathize with—with people who are all frozen up."

"I suppose it is no use asking you for a plain answer to a plain question?"

"Why not?"

"Well—you are a woman."

"Is that a compliment for my sex, or is it marked 'personal'?"

"Tessie——"

"That's better; you are thawing."

"Tessie!"

"You have called me twice, and I am listening all the time."

"I don't know how to say what I want to say."

"How curious! You are usually so—well, never at a loss for words."

"You chill me."

"Poor fellow! Going into the Arctic regions again?"

"I am going away from the farm—to the Arctic regions, or to the devil, I don't much care where."

She started when he said he was going away, and caught her underlip between her teeth, and held it there.

It prevented its trembling. Presently she said:

"I thought you were going to stay—quite a while."

"So did I."

"Why are you going, then?"

"Driven away."

"Really."

She was herself again by now. A conscious smile played round her lips as she inquired:

"Who's the driver?"

"Tessie Depew."

It did not surprise her a bit; she had guessed what was coming. But she simply said again:

"Really!"

And he found it most aggravating. She had said "really" in that surprised tone so often that he began to hate the word.

He swished the heads of the tall grass with the stick he was carrying—the beheading operation was a relief to his feelings.

She watched him from beneath her long lashes, and there was a curve round her lips all the time—she couldn't help a smile.

"I thought at one time, Tessie——"

"Yes?"

"Thought you—well, I was a fool for thinking so, wasn't I?"

"Really can't tell what you did think," she answered demurely. "I am sure I should be a conspicuous failure as a thought reader."

"Last night I went to bed the happiest man in America."

"So?"

"Yes. I am a poor devil of a wandering sort of sheep, and a woman's kind words have come on my ears so seldom——"

"Yes."

"That they influence me when they come."

"Women," she spoke with assumed carelessness, "have been kind to you, then?"

"You were kind to me last night, Tessie."

"Really! What did I say?"

"Not so much what you said, but the way you said it. Tessie, don't drive me mad. You know—you do—now, don't you—that I love you?"

Of course she knew it, but she was not going to admit it. She looked quite surprised, as if such an idea had never occurred to her.

She was a true woman—an actress to the tips of her fingers, when the subject of the play was love. He went on:

"I led an idle sort of life, Tessie, in the old country, and I came out here to turn over a new leaf. I have turned it over, and fastened down the old one.

"I am not worth a red cent—whatever that is—now, but I have faith in myself, and I believe that presently, if hard work and persistence raise a man on the ladder, I'll be able to climb up. I never expected for a moment that you would climb with me; I would not be such a selfish brute as to ask you to. But there was something I had intended to ask you—only—only——"

"What was it?"

"Your kindness made me think of it. I told you that I went to bed last night the happiest man in all America. But I didn't tell you I slept.

"I did not. I lay thinking—thinking all the time of you. I thought I would begin that climb with such a heart, with such an eagerness, with such a will, because I would have you for an incentive."

"Well?"

"I thought that last night, because you behaved to me like a—like an angel. And I determined to ask you to-day to—to—that's why I came out to the sheds to meet you."

"What were you—what were you going to ask me?"

"To wait for me, Tessie. To wait a year or two till I was up the tree a bit with a nest I could invite you to share with me. I love you, Tessie, love you with all my heart and soul.

"I suppose I ought to have told you all this differently; then you would have liked me all the better for it. But I am not experienced in love affairs, Tessie. You are the first woman I have ever really loved—the first I have ever told so."

She did not, somehow, seem dissatisfied with his manner of telling it, and the concluding sentence was as wise a one as he could have framed.

They were walking very slowly now, and if the girl did not say much, she thought the more. Nice, pleasant, happy thoughts, and they made her sweet to the man who had inspired them.

"The plain question I wanted a plain answer to, Tessie, was: Was I a fool last night? Was I ass enough to misunderstand you? Did my vanity make me think you cared for me? Tessie, Tessie, do you love me?"

"You said a plain question, Gerald."

She had her eyes fixed on the ground as she spoke. "But I have counted four questions all in that one breath."

"Tessie, darling, answer me."

"What, all four?"

She had raised her mischievous eyes to his, and fixed them on him in such a way that his heart leaped.

"Tessie!"

"Supposing I answer one?"

"Tessie?"

"The—last—one."

"Yes, yes, yes."

"That is my answer."

"What?"

"Yes."

He caught her in his arms then, and—well, Blossom standing in the middle of the meadow chewing her cud paused in that operation in sheer astonishment.

CHAPTER XIV

"That she did not tell me," the woman answered shortly; "don't go if you don't want to. I've given you the message."

"That's all right, Susan; don't lose your temper. I'll go fast enough."

"She told me to say, too, that you were not to tell any one."

"Trust me, I won't. What's the time by your kitchen clock? Just three. There's an hour to wait. All right."

He went away about his business. Susan watched him out of sight.

Presently she went away about her business—in the direction of the old water mill. She took with her some old pieces of rope which had been used for binding butter kegs, and which she knew would never be missed. They had been thrown aside as useless, because they were so soaked in fat.

She had half an hour to wait before the hands of the kitchen clock would point to four, but she waited patiently.

Her revenge was coming within her grasp, the revenge she had been praying and hoping for—a life for a life.

The roof of the old mill and the rafters and part of the loft flooring were fairly sound.

She tied a heavy stone to her rope, and, after climbing to the loft, pulled up the stone after her. There she waited. The old mill was a baited trap.

She passed the time in coiling the rope, and handling and weighing the stone. She intended to drop the stone on her victim's head.

She knew it would stun him. She had seen a man fall senseless—and remain senseless for an hour—on the occasion of a far less heavy weight falling on his head.

Ten minutes would suffice for her task, if he remained senseless as long.

She mapped out what she would do if the stone failed. She would drop from above, spring on him from behind, and half choke the life out of him with her strong, long, bony fingers.

Then she would bring him to again, when she had fastened him up. She did not want him to die—yet.

Before four o'clock, Gerald Danvers entered the mill.

Before four o'clock he was lying senseless on the floor, a great ugly gash in the back of his head, and a woman feeling at his heart to know if it was beating, and laughing a maniacal laugh of triumph when she found it was, and that her scheme was successful—so far.

Then she tied him up. Tightly round the ankles and knees, and his wrists close round his waist.

His arms she kept open—open for the binding cords to be looped through.

The wheel she kept in a fixed position by means of a wooden pin thrust in its side from the interior of the mill. That fixed, it was easy to walk out of the door window on the floor's level, straight to the paddle nearest it.

Susan dragged Gerald's unconscious body along the floor, out of the window, on to the paddle, and then she began to bind him to the blade.

She had come with plenty of pieces of rope, and, slinging one round the paddle, she caught the end of it the other side.

By that means she fastened the feet. Another piece, thrown in a similar way, she drew through the arms, and her prisoner was securely bound then, unable to move, literally, hand or foot.

Then she drew the man's handkerchief from his pocket, and forcing his mouth open, used it as a gag, knotting it behind his head.

She got off the paddle, back into the mill, and gazed on her handiwork.

The figure did not stir. The eyes were closed, and although the blood had ceased flowing, the body seemed lifeless.

This did not suit Susan. She wanted the man to awake, to suffer torture.

She wondered how she could get water to pour over him. She had come without dipper or basin of any kind.

Could she move the wheel, she wondered. She knew she was strong. If she could gradually turn this, blade by blade, it would go faster and faster, and as the bottom three blades, she could see, were in the pool, it followed that, for a few moments, the man would be—from head to foot—in the cold water. That could not fail to revive him.

She would try. She did.

She withdrew the pin, and pulled and pushed with all the strength that in her lay.

It seemed a hopeless task, but presently she felt the paddle she was pushing move just half an inch, then an inch, then more and more, and at last the second paddle was where the first had been.

The wheel was moving. The man was on his road to the water at the bottom.

The wheel went round faster because the weight of the man told.

The body passed through the water and came up. And then real hard work for Susan commenced.

She had not thought of the additional weight on the upward journey.

But she was bound to bring the body up to a level position, if she broke every sinew in her wiry frame.

After infinite labor she succeeded, and with a sigh of relief thrust the pin into its place again—the pin which held the wheel firm.

Not that there was any need for that. Lying in a level position, the balance was true.

The wheel would have stayed so without the pin.

Then she looked at the prisoner—he was looking at her! The water had nearly choked him, but it had at the same time brought him back to life, if not to understanding of the situation. The woman spoke to him:

"You are back to your senses. You can understand what I am saying?"

The look in his eyes answered her. She went on:

"You are going to die, Gerald Danvers. Die slowly. I am killing you because you killed my husband. It's a life for a life. Your life for that of the man you killed on the ship.

"You will live there, just as you are, without bite or sup, till the rain comes. You will be able to see the clouds as you lie there, the stars at night and the sun by day. When the rain comes the waters gather above, and where you see that trickling which just escapes your head, a waterfall appears and turns the wheel you are on."

The man had his eyes fixed on her all the time.

He understood clearly all she was saying now—but he could not fathom what was the reason for it all—what he had done to merit such a revenge.

He did not understand how—as Byron says—sweet is revenge, especially to women.

But for the handkerchief in his mouth, he might have been able to explain; as it was, he could not make a sound. She continued:

"If you want to live, pray that the rain may not come; if you want to die, pray that it may. When you feel that waterfall reaching you, then you may know that presently there will be force enough to turn the wheel, and that you will go round and round, faster and faster, now in the air, now in the water, now in the air, now in the water!"

She was waving her arms round and round to illustrate her meaning—she was so fearful that he should lose any of the horror of his position.

She need not have been. He lost none.

Every word she uttered went home. He realized it the more because he saw the woman was mad. Her eyes alone spoke the fact eloquently.

"If you pray for life, remember it will be a famishing, thirsty, hungry life. If we have no rain for a dozen days, not a taste of food, not a drop of water do you get. You can hear the water always trickling by you, and in a day or two as you get hungry I will bring my dinner here, and you shall see me eat it, you murdering brute, you!"

He realized, without the maniacal laughter, how mad she was.

His heart almost ceased beating. He was not a coward, but he felt that at this woman's mercy his death was certain. Not a speedy death, but a lingering, torturing one.

Rescue was out of the question. Not a soul came near the old mill, except at haymaking time to cut the grass. That was weeks ahead.

Still the woman talked.

"Till the rain comes, you know what to expect. Till the rain comes. And when it is all over I shall cut your cords and let you drop—splash—into the pool you have just been through.

"You killed my husband, you murderer, you! His blood calls out for vengeance. I am going to take—a terrible vengeance. But it is justice, the justice the parson tells us of—a life for a life—a tooth for a tooth. You took my husband's life—I am going to take yours. You murdering brute!"

It was her farewell speech. She slammed to the door, and he was left alone!