de her face bloodless white. She could not, however, repress
completely the instinctive movement of her hands to ward off the
menacing hand. Suddenly a panic seized her and in terrified haste she
moved to the closet and, feeling a moment, took what she knew was
Deems's chisel.

Do what she could, she could not stem the flow of panic, and suddenly as
she began to pant and breathe heavily with the strain of terror, she
began also to gasp her pleadings to Jim.

"Don't, Jim. Don't take me," and, as if not at all of her own volition,
but at that of a guiding power, she moved out of the house, ghastly in
the night, mumbling and shivering.

She was still atremble--she was now chilled by the dampness of ground
and air--when she stood by Jim Sloan's gravestone. White it gleamed
against the sky, and now Martha's trembling and murmuring turned into a
furious industry as she raised the chisel to the stone.

"Jim--you'll let me be, won't you? You'll let me be? I want 'a live
yet." She began a frenzied hacking at the gravestone, seeing nothing but
the play of her chisel, and the white, fearful stone towering over her,
hearing nothing but the rasp of the chisel--not even hearing the rattle
of the loosened gravel as it slid from under the stone.

Deems Lennon and his wife were awakened by a heavy crash. "What can it
be?" he asked his wife, and then left the bed and ran up to Martha's
room. She was gone. Instantly they were both fully awake.

"It's Jim's grave she's gone to," ventured Deems. "Remember the way she
said 'Oh!' that time I told how the rain loosened the stone? Come on,
we'll go see."

In the dark when they were near the spot where the stone used to stand,
they heard a moaning. They approached and found Martha caught under the
stone, her body crushed, her dying breath coming slowly and heavily,
carrying her words, "Let me go! Jim, let me go!"

TO THE BITTER END[13]

[Note 13: Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1920, by Richard Matthews Hallet.]

BY RICHARD MATTHEWS HALLET

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

The feud between Hat Tyler and Mrs. Elmer Higgins sprang out of a chance
laugh of Elmer's when he was making his first trip as cadet. Hat Tyler
was a sea captain, and of a formidable type. She was master of the
_Susie P. Oliver_, and her husband, Tyler, was mate. They were bound for
New York with a load of paving stones when they collided with the
coasting steamer _Alfred d