. Her figure
straightened, and her hands clenched.

"On the cross! Will you swear it?" she cried.

"On the sacred body of Jesus Himself, if I could face Him," answered
Dannie. "Anything! Everything is fra ye first, Mary!"

"Then why?" she panted between gasps for breath. "Tell me why? If you
have cared for me enough to stay here all these years and see that I
had the bist tratemint you could get for me, why didn't you care for me
enough more to save me this? Oh, Dannie, tell me why?"

And then she shook with strangled sobs until she scarce could stand
alone. Dannie Macnoun cleared the space between them and took her in
his arms. Her trembling hands clung to him, her head dropped on his
breast, and the perfume of her hair in his nostrils drove him mad. Then
the tense bulk of her body struck against him, and horror filled his
soul. One second he held her, the next, Jimmy smothering under the hay,
threw up an arm, and called like a petulant child, "Dannie! Make shun
quit shinish my fashe!"

And Dannie awoke to the realization that Mary was another man's, and
that man, one who trusted him completely. The problem was so much too
big for poor Dannie that reason kindly slipped a cog. He broke from the
grasp of the woman, fled through the back door, and took to the woods.

He ran as if fiends were after him, and he ran and ran. And when he
could run no longer, he walked, but he went on. Just on and on. He
crossed forests and fields, orchards and highways, streams and rivers,
deep woods and swamps, and on, and on he went. He felt nothing, and saw
nothing, and thought nothing, save to go on, always on. In the dark he
stumbled on and through the day he staggered on, and he stopped for
nothing, save at times to lift water to his parched lips.

The bushes took his hat, the thorns ripped his shirt, the water soaked
his shoes and they spread and his feet came through and the stones cut
them until they bled. Leaves and twigs stuck in his hair, and his eyes
grew bloodshot, his lips and tongue swollen, and when he could go no
further on his feet, he crawled on his knees, until at last he pitched
forward on his face and lay still. The tumult was over and Mother
Nature set to work to see about repairing damages.

Dannie was so badly damaged, soul, heart, and body, that she never
would have been equal to the task, but another woman happened that way
and she helped. Dannie was carried to a house and a doctor dressed his
hurts. When