There was a fatty frying-pan on the top of the kitchen range--that new-fangled range that Pamela had made Jethro buy. A victorious gleam hardened her glittering eyes: the maids had been cutting rashers for their supper. Her rule was bread, cheese, and water or cider. This was a battle to be fought out in the morning. The jades! And not wit enough to scour the pan! The knife-box stood on the dresser. Gainah bent over it, from habit again. Everything definite that she did that night was done quite mechanically and from unquenchable habit. It was her habit to peer for dirty knives sneaked in among the clean: that was a cardinal offense. The box was made of mahogany. There was a brass handle; it gleamed in the light of her candle. The knives had heavy buck-horn handles. Old Jethro had been proud of them, his son took to them as a matter of course, but Pamela had sneered and said they were barbarous. There were two sets--a dozen to each set. One was of lighter make than the other; their handles were straight and tipped with steel. The heavier set had stouter handles, which bulged out in knots at the ends. Gainah picked out the two carving-knives and scrutinized the blades. There was a weary, speculative look on her wasted, corpse-white face, in which the brilliant eyes stood out so unnaturally. The frying-pan was at her feet, but at the touch of the keen knives she absolutely whirled away from trivial offenses--she was swept by one superb, dangerous emotion. She looked round the polished, scoured kitchen, as if asking those dumb gleaming metal things on walls and shelves to help her--to suggest. Then she moved toward the scullery and quietly drew the long bolts of the door. She went across the yard, skirting the generous pile of farm-buildings. They had been overhauled with the rest of the place. The brick walls had been pointed; she could see every even, white line of mortar. The roofs of thick thatch had been covered with sheets of corrugated iron, which were hard and gray in the dim night. She went to the tool-shed. That, by some oversight or by intention, had been left untouched. It stood apart--the walls red patched with green, the roof of rough tiles covered with a luxurious growth of lichens and stonecrop. She pushed back the door and went in. There were tools and labor implements of many sorts in the house: all the deadly array of weapons permitted to the peaceful agriculturist. Every one was familiar, to her; she had known them all from her very birth--pronged fork, long scythe, solid spade, rakes with long pointed teeth. She sat down on a heap of sacks and rubbish by the wall. Her oddly bright eyes roved feverishly over the collection; some on the earthen floor, some sentinel-like against the wall, some slipped up in the rafters, lying stealthily in wait.