its success she had staked all. To abandon her secret efforts
would leave her again wandering, wavering, to go over the whole weary
ground again. Mrs. MacGregor made her decision. Her voice was modulated,
almost sympathetic, but it was firm and decided.

"No, Amy, he has not done enough. You have not done enough. He must go
on. He must give you up. You must give him up."

Amy sprang from her chair. Her work slipped from her lap and lay huddled
at her feet. Slowly, painfully, the meaning of Mrs. MacGregor's words
was boring into her brain. Her eyes were wide open, pitifully pleading,
like the eyes of a shrinking victim in the clutch of a beast of prey.
Then they changed to a look as hard and resolute as her eyes were
capable of expressing.

"Give up Elijah! I'll never give up Elijah. Never! Never! Never!" Then
she fled through the open door.

Mrs. MacGregor smiled complacently. "Never," was a long time. She had
steered close to the line, but she felt that she had won. As it
happened, chance aided her. Had Elijah been at home, in her first agony,
Amy would doubtless have gone to him and have risked all in a frantic
appeal. But Elijah was away and it was late before he returned. In her
room, Amy sat with the dumb misery of a suffering animal. It did not
occur to her to rise up in righteous wrath against the brutal woman who
had inflicted this torture upon her, much less against her husband. She
was thinking of herself, of her happiness that had been, of the awful
fear that was consuming her. Justice or injustice was far from her
thoughts. In bitter desperation she clung to the feeble purpose that she
had fashioned for her salvation. Gradually this purpose regained its
hold upon her. She was wasting time and there was none to lose.
Trembling in every nerve she hastened from her room, from _their_ room,
and with trembling fingers turned the pages of "A & B's Elements" and
bent herself to her all but hopeless task. With quivering lips and hard,
dry eyes she wrote and rewrote the problems of the book and strove to
master them. She was unconscious of time, only that it was long and
bitter. The magnitude of her task appalled her, the hopelessness of it
overwhelmed her, she tried to hold herself to it; but in vain. With a
wailing cry she buried her head in her arms and gave way to the tears
that at last came to her relief.

It was late that night when Elijah returned. He gave his horses in
charge of the sleepy Mexican and e