e man had not yet beaten her to the level
of the woman. She was dressed in a faded calico, frayed at the bottom,
and with the sleeves bobbed off just above the elbows of her slim white
arms. Her stockings were mottled with patches and mends, and her shoes
were old, and worn out at the toes.

But to Peter, worshipping her from his hiding place, she was the most
beautiful thing in the world. Jolly Roger had said the same thing, and
most men--and women, too--would have agreed that this slip of a girl
possessed a beauty which it would take a long time for unhappiness and
torture to crush entirely out of her. Her eyes were as blue as the
violets Peter had thrust his nose among that day. And her hair was a
glory, loosed by her exertion from its bondage of faded ribbon, and
falling about her shoulders and nearly to her waist in a mass of
curling brown tresses that at times had made even Jed Hawkins' one eye
light of with admiration. And yet, even in those times, he hated her,
and more than once his bony fingers had closed viciously in that mass
of radiant hair, but seldom could he wring a scream of pain from Nada.
Even now, when she could see the light of the devil in his one gleaming
eye, it was only her flesh--and not her soul--that was afraid.

But the strain had begun to show its mark. In the blue of her eyes was
the look of one who was never free of haunting visions, her cheeks were
pallid, and a little too thin, and the vivid redness of her lips was
not of health and happiness, but a touch of the color which should have
been in her face, and which until now had refused to die.

She faced the man, a little out of the reach of his arm.

"I told you never again to raise your hand to strike her," she cried in
a fierce, suppressed little voice, her blue eyes flaming loathing and
hatred at him. "If you hit her once more--something is going to happen.
If you want to hit anyone, hit me. I kin stand it. But--look at her!
You've broken her shoulder, you've crippled her--an' you oughta die!"

The man advanced half a step, his eye ablaze. Deep down in him Peter
felt something he had never felt before. For the first time in his life
he had no desire to run away from the man. Something rose up from his
bony little chest, and grew in his throat, until it was a babyish snarl
so low that no human ears could hear it. And in his hiding-place his
needle-like fangs gleamed under snarling lips.

But the man did not strike, nor did he rea