first when he looked within. She disposed the ax
to conceal it entirely beneath her long apron, her hand under the
garment grasping the helve.

"For your own sake, not his, I ask you not to strike him," Mackenzie
pleaded, in all the earnestness he could command.

"I have given you the hour of my vengeance," she replied. "But if he
curses me, if he lifts his hand!"

Mackenzie was more than a little uneasy on the probable outcome of
his meeting with the tempestuous Swan. He got out his pipe and lit it,
considering the situation with fast-running thoughts. Still, a man
could not go on and leave that beaten, enslaved woman to the mercies
of her tyrant; Swan Carlson must be given to understand that he would
be held to answer to the law for his future behavior toward her.

"If I were you I'd put the ax behind the door and get his supper
ready," said he.

Mrs. Carlson got up at the suggestion, with such readiness that
surprised Mackenzie, put the ax back of the open door, stood a moment
winding up her fallen hair.

"Yes, he is my man," she said.

Swan was turning his horse into the barn; Mackenzie could hear him
talking to the animal, not unkindly. Mrs. Carlson put fresh fuel in
the stove, making a rattling of the lids which must have sounded
cheerful to the ears of a hungry man. As she began breaking eggs into
a bowl she took up her song again, with an unconscious air of
detachment from it, as one unwittingly follows the habit that has been
for years the accompaniment to a task.

As before, the refinement of accent was wanting in her words, but the
sweet melancholy of her voice thrilled her listener like the rich
notes of an ancient violin.

_Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone,
He promise na-fer to leafe me,
Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!_

Mackenzie sat with his elbow on the table, his chair partly turned
toward the door, just within the threshold and a little to one side,
where the flockmaster would see him the moment he stepped into the
light. The traveler's pack lay on the floor at the door jamb; the
smoke from his pipe drifted out to tell of his presence in the honest
announcement of a man who had nothing to hide.

So Swan Carlson found him as he came home to his door.

Swan stopped, one foot in the door, the light on his face. Mrs.
Carlson did not turn from the stove to greet him by word or look, but
stood bending a little over the pan of sputtering eggs, whi