cholar, and the toil was great. When it was done,
she propped the paper up against the looking-glass.

Then she felt for her dress, and deliberately put it on again, in the
dark, though her hands were so numb with cold that she could scarcely
hook the fastenings. Her teeth chattered as she threw her old shawl
round her.

Stooping down she took off her boots, and pushing the bolt of her own
door back as noiselessly as possible, she crept down the stairs. As she
neared the lower door, the sound of two or three loud breathings caught
her ear.

Her heart contracted with an awful sense of loneliness. Her husband
slept--her children slept--while she--

Then the wave of a strange, a just passion mounted within her. She
stepped into the kitchen, and walking up to her husband's chair, she
stood still a moment looking at him. The lamp was dying away, but she
could still see him plainly. She held herself steadily erect; a frown
was on her brow, a flame in her eyes.

'Well, good-bye, Isaac,' she said, in a low but firm voice.

Then she walked to the back door and opened it, taking no heed of noise;
the latch fell heavily, the hinges creaked.

'Isaac!' she cried, her tones loud and ringing,--_Iaac!_'

There was a sudden sound in the kitchen. She slipped through the door,
and ran along the snow-covered garden.

Isaac, roused by her call from the deep trance of exhaustion which only
a few minutes before had fallen upon his misery, stood up, felt the
blast rushing in through the open door at the back, and ran blindly.

The door had swung to again. He clutched it open; in the dim weird
light, he saw a dark figure stoop over the well; he heard something
flung aside, which fell upon the snow with a thud; then the figure
sprang upon the coping of the well.

He ran with all his speed, his face beaten by the wind and sleet. But he
was too late. A sharp cry pierced the night. As he reached the well, and
hung over it, he heard, or thought he heard, a groan, a beating of the
water--then no more.

Isaac's shouts for help attracted the notice of a neighbour who was
sitting up with her daughter and a new-born child. She roused her
son-in-law and his boy, and through them a score of others, deep night
though it was.

Watson was among the first of those who gathered round the well. He and
others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him up
again, while the snow beat upon them all--the straining men--two
dripping sha