f it was hung on a string, an' my side! The axe,
Keehoty, the axe!"

She found and brought it, weeping bitterly. She had never felt so sorry
for anybody as for this brave old fellow who was now forcing himself to
overcome his own misery for the sake of others. For when she begged him
to stay still where he was and let her run to the village and bring
somebody to help he vigorously refused.

"Scare the hull community just 'cause I was fool enough to tumble down
and crack my leg? Me, an old woodman, that'd ought to have some sense.
An' Eunice! Why, 'twould scare Eunice out of a year's growth to see me
fetched home 'stead of walkin' there on my own pins. Half a loaf's
better'n no loaf, an' one leg's better'n none. As for my plaguey old
ribs--they can take care themselves. But once we get there you just clip
it to the doctor's an' have him come 'round an' patch me up. He'll have
to do it so's I can be workin' reg'lar, 'cause I'm the only man there
is. Besides, town meetin's comin' on, an'--My sake! I'm beat!"

Beaten he was into the silence which he had dreaded, wherein he realized
his own agony. He had kept talking to prevent thinking, but had now
passed beyond that. By nods and glances he directed Kate along the
shortest way, but it seemed to the sufferer as if the familiar big stone
house grew steadily more distant rather than nearer.

Katharine never forgot that walk. To her, also, the distance seemed
interminable, and the firm clutch of his hand upon her shoulder for its
support almost to break her own bones. His face, when she now and then
glanced toward it, was pallid with suffering, but his lips were grimly
shut, defying his own misery. As he shaved only once a week, on Sunday
morning, his half-grown stubble of beard enhanced his pallor, but did
not add to his beauty; and Katharine, reared among city folks who made
such "Sunday habits" their every-day ones, felt something like disgust.

"I'm awful sorry for him, but--but he looks horrid. And he hurts me,
too. Oh, I wish we had never come into this dreadful forest, pretty as
it is; but, joy! there's a house. We'll be in the village soon and at
home. What will Aunt Eunice say? And where did that mean boy go?"

As Katharine's thoughts ran on this wise they were steadily though
slowly passing over the rough ground of the wood to the smoother fields
beyond; and as they came in sight of the Maitland barns, there was
Montgomery peeping around a corner and on the looko