you have quite recovered. Let us say next
Wednesday, three days hence."

"You shall never mesmerize me again, Mr. Meyer."

"No, not while I live," broke in her father, who had been listening to
this discussion in silence.

Jacob bowed his head meekly.

"You think so now, but I think otherwise. What I did last night I did
against your will, and that I can do again, only much more easily. But I
had rather do it with your will, who work not for my own sake only, but
for the sake of all of us. And now let us talk no more of the matter,
lest we should grow angry." Then he rose and went away.

The next three days were passed by Benita in a state of constant dread.
She knew in herself that Jacob Meyer had acquired a certain command over
her; that an invincible intimacy had sprung up between them. She was
acquainted with his thoughts; thus, before he asked for it, she
would find herself passing him some article at table or elsewhere, or
answering a question that he was only about to ask. Moreover, he could
bring her to him from a little distance. Thus, on two or three occasions
when she was wandering about their prison enclosure, as she was wont to
do for the sake of exercise, she found her feet draw to some spot--now
one place and now another--and when she reached it there before her was
Jacob Meyer.

"Forgive me for bringing you here," he would say, smiling after his
crooked fashion, and lifting his hat politely, "but I wish to ask you if
you have not changed your mind as to being mesmerized?"

Then for a while he would hold her with his eyes, so that her feet
seemed rooted to the ground, till at length it was as though he cut a
rope by some action of his will and set her free, and, choked with wrath
and blind with tears, Benita would turn and run from him as from a wild
beast.

But if her days were evil, oh! what were her nights? She lived in
constant terror lest he should again drug her food or drink, and, while
she slept, throw his magic spell upon her. To protect herself from the
first danger she would swallow nothing that had been near him. Now also
she slept in the hut with her father, who lay near its door, a loaded
rifle at his side, for he had told Jacob outright that if he caught him
at his practices he would shoot him, a threat at which the younger man
laughed aloud, for he had no fear of Mr. Clifford.

Throughout the long hours of darkness they kept watch alternately, one
of them lying down to rest whi