uld not let him go
until he had had some real joy. To think that she used to plan,
cold-bloodedly, when Billy was little, all she would do if only Martin
should happen to die! The memory of it smote her as with a blow. She
looked down at the powerful hand lying so passively, almost, she would
have said, contentedly, in her own. How she had yearned for the comfort
of it when her children were born. She wondered if Martin realized her
touch, if it helped a little. If it had annoyed him, he would have said
so. It came to her oddly that in all the twenty-seven years she and her
husband had been married this was the very first time he had let her
be tender to him. Oh, his life had been bleak. Bleak! And she with such
tenderness in her heart. It hadn't been right. From the depths of her
rebellion and forgiveness, slow tears rose. Feeling too intensely, too
mentally, to be conscious of them she sat unmoving as they rolled one by
one down her cheeks and dropped unheeded.

"Rose," he called with a soft hoarseness, "I want to talk to you."

"Yes, Martin," and she gave his fingers a slight squeeze as though to
convince him that she was there at his side. He felt relieved. It was
good to feel her hand and be sure that if his body were to give its
final sign that life had slipped away someone would be there to know the
very second it had happened. It was a satisfactory way to die; it took a
little of the loneliness away from the experience.

"Rose," he repeated. It sounded so new, the yearning tone in which he
said it--"Rose!" It hurt. "Isn't it funny, Rose, to go like this--not
sick, no accident--just dying without any real reason except that I
absorbed the poison through a cut so small my eyes couldn't see it."

"It's a mystery, dear," the little word limped out awkwardly, "but God's
ways are not ours."

"Not a mystery," he corrected, "just a heap of tricks; funny ones, sad
ones, sensible ones, and crazy ones--and of all the crazy ones this is
the worst. But, what's the use? If there's a God, as you believe,
it doesn't do any good to argue with Him, and if it's as I think and
there's no God, there's no one to argue with. But never mind about that
now--it's no matter. You'll listen carefully, won't you, Rose?"

"Yes, Martin."

"This abortion in the herd. You know what a terrible thing it is."

"I certainly do; it's the cause of your leaving me."

"Rose, I know you'll be busy during the next few days--me dying, the
things