efused to budge, funked the plunge, submitting to unending blows,
and words which were almost worse than blows. And by her obstinacy and
apathy she was driving the best man on God's earth to premeditated
murder.

That morning, let us remember, Tom had beaten the dog, and because she
had interfered with a pitiful protest her husband had struck her close
to the temple. Ever since this blow she had heard the roar of the
falls with increasing intensity.

"Why don't it move?" she asked herself.

As she put the question the log did move, borne away by the full
current. Mamie, followed by the dog, ran after it, with her eyes
aflame with excitement. Dennis barked, divining something uncanny,
eager to distract the mind of his mistress from what seemed to be
engrossing it. Still she ran on, with her eyes upon the log. The dog
knew that she must stop in a moment, that no one could pass the falls
unless they went over them. Did he divine also that she meant to go
over them--that at last, with her poor, imperfect vision, she had seen
that way out of captivity?

She reached the point where farther advance was impossible. To her
right rose a solid wall of stone; opposite rose its twin; between the
two the river rushed tumultuously, tossing the great logs hither and
thither as if they were spilikins.

Mamie watched her own log. After its goadings it kept a truer course
than most of its fellows. But she had outstripped it. Standing upon
the edge of the precipice, feeling the cold spray upon her face,
hearing the maddening roar of the monster below, less to be feared
than that other monster from whom she realised that she had escaped,
she waited for the final plunge....

What was passing in her mind at this supreme moment? We may well
believe that she saw clearly the past through the mists which obscured
the future. Always she had been a log at the mercy of a drunken
father. Her mother had died in giving birth to her, but she knew
vaguely that this mother was a Church member. She did not know--and,
knowing, could never have understood--that from her she had inherited
a conscience--or shall we call it an ineradicable instinct?--which
constrained her to turn aside, shuddering, from certain temptations,
to obey, without reasoning, certain ethical laws, solemnly expounded
to her by a Calvinistic grandmother. But Nature had been too much for
her. Even as she had turned instinctively and with horror from the
breaking of a commandment,