t Mrs. Jenny, a very moving statue of terror.

'Dick,' she said, clutching the young man by the arm, 'I can't abear it
any longer. Come in here wi' me.' She pulled him into a side room, and
sitting down, abandoned herself to weeping, wringing her hands, and
moaning.

'I can't abear it any longer,' she repeated. 'I must tell somebody, an'
I'll tell you. It's all my wicked cruel fault.'

The old woman was so crazed with her secret that she would have spoken
in the shadow of the gibbet. Ramblingly and incoherently, with many
breaks for tears and protestations and self-accusation, she told her
story.

'I've killed her, Dick. But it was for your sake and hers as I done it.
I reckon they'll hang me, an' it'll serve me right.' She besought him
not to betray her, and, in the same breath, announced her intention to
surrender herself at once to the parish constable; and, indeed, between
fear and remorse and sorrow for the hopeless love she had striven to
befriend, was nearly mad. Dick heard her with such amazement as may be
best imagined, and suddenly, with a cry that rang in her ears for many a
long day afterwards, ran from her and scaled the stairs to Julia's
room, led thither by the sound of Mrs. Mountain's weeping. The old woman
stared, as well she might, at the intrusion, with a wonder which for a
moment conquered sorrow. He went straight to the bed, and leaned over
the stark figure upon it.

'She's not dead yet,' he said, more to himself than to the
grief-stricken mother. Mrs. Mountain heard the words, and clutched his
arm. He turned to her. 'Trust me,' he said, 'and I'll save her.' The
wild hope in the mother's eyes was terrible to see. 'I love her,' said
Dick. 'You will trust me? Do as I bid you, and you shall have Julia back
in an hour.'

Samson Mountain meanwhile wandered in the same purposeless fashion
about the farm, and held dumb converse with himself. He was a rough man,
something of a brute--a good deal of an animal--but animals have their
affections, and he loved Julia as well as it was in his nature to love
anything. It was ingrained in him by nature and by years of unquestioned
domination to bully and browbeat all defenceless people; but Julia, the
most defenceless of his surroundings, had been treated always with a
lighter hand. Childlike, she had taken advantyage of her immunity in
many little ways, and though Samson had never forborne to bluster at her
girlish insubordination, he rather liked it than n