as to escape
from her cell and put a thousand miles between her body and the beast
who had strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a rule the
shed-rooms of these rude mountain cabins were covered with split boards
lightly nailed to narrow strips eighteen inches apart. If there were
no ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she should
move carefully, she might break through near the eaves and drop to the
ground. The cabin was not more than nine feet in height.

She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and felt the ceiling.
There could be no mistake. It was there. She pressed gently at first and
then with all her might against each board. They were nailed hard and
fast.

She sank to the bed again in despair. She had barred herself in a prison
cell. There was no escape except by the door through which the beast had
driven her. And he would probably draw the couch against it and sleep
there.

And then came the crushing conviction that such flight would be of no
avail in a struggle with a man of Jim's character. His laughing words of
triumph rang through her soul now in all their full, sinister meaning.

"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo!"

It wasn't big enough. She knew it with tragic and terrible certainty. In
his blind, brutal way he loved her with a savage passion that would halt
at nothing. He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill any
living thing that stood in his way. And when he found her at last he
would kill her.

How could she have been so blind! There was no longer any mystery about
his personality. The slender hands and feet, which she had thought
beautiful in her infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief.
The strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him the most daring
of all thieves--a burglar.

His strange moods were no longer strange. He laughed for joy at the wild
mountain gorges and crags because he saw safety for the hiding-place of
priceless jewels he meant to steal.

There could be no escape in divorce from such a brute. He was happy in
her cowardly submission. He would laugh at the idea of divorce. Should
she dare to betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill her
as he would grind a snake under his heel.

A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept ringing its
knell--"until DEATH DO US PART!"

She knelt at last and prayed for Death.

"Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!"

Suicid