nt mad, almost, because--I thought--maybe you'd been to
see--her. I--saw you coming down the hill. I thought--I'd die
thinking of--you--with her. I can't tell you--what I've been through,
what I've suffered, and--what I suffer right along. I know I ain't to
be pitied. I know--there ain't any pity--anywhere for anything--like
this. I don't pity--myself. But it's awful. If you could get a sight
of it, you'd know."

Again to Thomas Payne, looking at the other, it was as if he saw a
pale agonized face staring up at him from the midst of a curved mass
of deformity. He shuddered.

"I don't know what to make of you, Barney Thayer," he said, looking
away.

"There's one thing--I want to say," Barney went on. "I think there's
enough of a man left in me--I--think I've got strength enough to say
it. She--ought to be happy. I don't want her--wasting her whole
life--God knows--I don't--no matter what it does--to me. I--wish--
See here, Thomas. I know you--like her. Maybe she'll--turn to you. It
seems as if she must. I hope you will--oh, for God's sake, be--good
to her, Thomas!"

Thomas Payne's face was as white as Barney's. He turned to go.
"There's no use talking this way. You know Charlotte Barnard as well
as I do," he said. "You know she's one of the women that never love
any man but one. I don't want another man's wife, if she'd have me."
Suddenly he faced Barney again. "For God's sake, Barney," he cried
out, "be a man and go back to her, and marry her!"

Barney shook his head; with a kind of a sob he turned around and went
his way without another word. Thomas Payne said no more; he stared
after Barney's retreating figure, and again the look of bewilderment
and horror was in his face.

That afternoon he asked his father, with a casual air, if he had
heard anything about Barney Thayer getting his back injured in any
way.

"Why, no, I can't say as I have," returned the squire.

"I saw him this morning, and I thought his back looked as if it was
growing like Royal Bennet's. I dare say I imagined it," said Thomas.
Then he went out of the room whistling.

But, during his few weeks' stay in Pembroke, he put the same question
to one and another, with varying results. Some said at once, with a
sudden look of vague horror, that it was so. That Barney Thayer was
indeed growing deformed; that they had noticed it. Others scouted the
idea. "Saw him this morning, and he's as straight as he ever was,"
they said.

Whether Barney T