gh that was almost a
moan.

"If I had met that man long ago," she said slowly, as if groping
vaguely in some hitherto unsounded depth of consciousness, "I would
never have become what I am. I felt that as I looked at him--it all
came over me with an awful sickening feeling--just as if we were
standing alone somewhere out of the world where there was no need of
words to say things. He doesn't despise me--he wouldn't sneer at me,
bad as I am, like those creatures up there. He could have helped me
if we had met in time, but it's too late now."

She locked her hands over her eyes and groaned, swaying her body to
and fro as one in mortal agony. Presently she looked out again with
hard, dry eyes.

"What a fool I am!" she said bitterly. "How the Corner saints would
stare if they saw me! I suppose some of them do--" with a glance at
the windows of a neighbouring house. "Yes, there's Mrs. Rawlings
staring out and Rose peeking over her shoulder."

Her face hardened. The old sway of evil passion reasserted itself.

"She shall never come back here--never. Oh, she was a sweet-spoken cat
of a thing--but she had claws. I've been blamed for all the trouble.
But if ever I had a chance, I'd tell that minister how she used to
twit and taunt me in that sugary way of hers--how she schemed and
plotted against me as long as she could. More fool I to care what he
thinks either! I wish I were dead. If 'twasn't for the child, I'd go
and drown myself at that black spring-hole down there--I'd be well out
of the way."

* * * * *

It was a dull grey afternoon a week afterwards when Allan Telford
again walked up the river road to the Palmer place. The wind was
bitter and he walked with bent head to avoid its fury. His face was
pale and worn and he looked years older.

He paused at the rough gate and leaned over it while he scanned the
house and its surroundings eagerly. As he looked, the kitchen door
opened and Min, clad in the old overcoat, came out and walked swiftly
across the yard.

Telford's eyes followed her with pitiful absorption. He saw her lead a
horse from the stable and harness it into a wood-sleigh loaded with
bags of grain. Once she paused to fling her arms about the animal's
neck, laying her face against it with a caressing motion.

The pale minister groaned aloud. He longed to snatch her forever from
that hard, unwomanly toil and fold her safely away from jeers and
scorn in the shelter of h