she knew not what. George Masson was to come and inspect
the flume early that morning. Had he come? She had not seen him. But
the river was flowing through the flume: she could hear the mill-wheel
turning--she could hear the mill-wheel turning!

As she did not speak, with a curious husky shrillness to his voice he
said: "There he was down in the flume, there was I at the lever above,
there was the mill-wheel unlocked. There it was. I gripped the lever,
and--"

Her great eyes stared with horror. The knitting-needles stopped; a
pallor swept across her face. She felt as she did when she heard the
court-martial sentence Carvillho Gonzales to death.

The mill-wheel sounded louder and louder in her ears.

"You let in the river!" she cried. "You drove him into the wheel--you
killed him!"

"What else was there to do?" he demanded. "It had to be done, and it
was the safest way. It would be an accident. Such a thing might easily
happen."

"You have murdered him!" she gasped with a wild look.

"To call it murder!" he sneered. "Surely my wife would not call it
murder."

"Fiend--not to have the courage to fight him!" she flung back at him.
"To crawl like a snake and let loose a river on a man! In any other
country, he'd have been given a chance."

This was his act in a new light. He had had only one idea in his mind
when he planned the act, and that was punishment. What rights had a man
who had stolen what was nearer and dearer than a man's own flesh, and
for which he would have given his own flesh fifty times? Was it that
Carmen would now have him believe he ought to have fought the man, who
had spoiled his life and ruined a woman's whole existence.

"What chance had I when he robbed me in the dark of what is worth fifty
times my own life to me?" he asked savagely.

"Murderer--murderer!" she cried hoarsely. "You shall pay for this."

"You will tell--you will give me up?"

Her eyes were on the mill and the river... "Where--where is he? Has he
gone down the river? Did you kill him and let him go--like that!"

She made a flinging gesture, as one would toss a stone.

He stared at her. He had never seen her face like that--so strained and
haggard. George Masson was right when he said that she would give him
up; that his life would be in danger, and that his child's life would be
spoiled.

"Murderer!" she repeated. "And when you go to the gallows, your child's
life--you did not think of that, eh? To have your revenge