ed to ask, "What did he do
then?"

"He looked at me, a queer, long look that made me shiver, and then he
walked off, and he never spoke to me again directly for six months. And
from that day he almost never speaks to me except through the children.
He calls me names through them. He cuts me every time he can. He does
everything he can to hurt me. He never dresses up, and he wears his hat
in the house at all times, and rolls up his sleeves at the table, just
because he knows it makes me suffer. Sometimes I think he is crazy, and
yet----"

"Oh, no, he ain't crazy. He's devilish," Morris blurted out. "Great
guns! I'd like to lay my hands on him."

She seemed to feel that a complete statement was demanded. "I can't
invite anybody to the house, for there's no knowing what he'll do. He
may stay in the fields all day and never come in at all, or he may come
in and curse and swear at me or do something--I never can tell what he
is goin' to do."

"Haven't you any relatives here?" Morris asked.

"Yes, but I'm ashamed to let them know about it, because they all said
I'd repent; and then he's my husband, and he's the father of my
children."

"A mighty poor excuse of one I call him," said the young man with
decision.

"I tried to give him the farm, when I found it was going to make
trouble, but he wouldn't take it _then_. He won't listen to me at all.
He keeps throwing it up to me that he's earning his living, and if I
don't think he is he will go any minute. He works in the field, but
that's all. He won't advise with me at all. He says it's none of his
business. He won't do a thing around the house or garden. I tried to get
him to oversee the mill for me, but, after our trouble, he refused to do
anything about it. I hired a man to run it, but it didn't pay that way,
and then it was idle for a while, and at last it got afire some way and
burned up--tramps, I suppose.

"Oh, dear!" she sighed, rising, "I don't see how it's going to end; it
must end some time. Sometimes it seems as if I couldn't stand it another
day, and then I think of my duty as a mother and wife, and I think
perhaps God intended this to be my cross."

The young fellow was silent. It was a great problem. The question of
divorce had never before been borne in upon him in this personal way. It
seemed to him a clear case. The man ought to be driven off and the woman
left in peace. He thought of the pleasure it would give her to hear the
sound of the mill ag