He cared so little for Gwinnan as Gwinnan that he entertained the mildest resentment toward the man who had struck him on the head with his iron shackles. The indignity offered by the foreman of the jury, and afterward by Harshaw, to Gwinnan the judge had burned into his consciousness, and the scars would be there on the judgment day. The knowledge that the attack was not in revenge for some fancied wrong in the trial, but that it was the frenzy of a madly jealous lover in chains and in expatriation, altered the whole aspect of the case for Gwinnan as Gwinnan. The judge could not, perhaps, have sufficiently condemned Gwinnan’s state of mind as he sat down and wrote to Mr. Kenbigh, the attorney for the State at Glaston, requesting that no action should be taken in regard to the assault, as he was not willing to prosecute. XXI. Alethea Sayles awoke early the morning after the momentous news of Mink’s journey had come to Wild-Cat Hollow; such an awakening as a barn-swallow might know, the familiar of the rafters and the clapboards. There was no other ceiling to the roof-room. She might put up her hand and touch it where she lay, but in the centre it was higher,—high enough for many pendent uses: bags of cotton swung from the ridge-pole; hanks of yarn; bunches of pepper; gourds; old hats and garments, of awry, distorted, facetious aspect in their caricature of the habit of humanity. The snow pressed heavily without; through the crevices vague white glimpses of the drifts might be seen, for the dull glow from the fire in the room below penetrated the cracks between the boards of the flooring, which served as the ceiling of the lower story. Light came in, too, from the rifts between the wall and the great stick-and-clay chimney, which bulged outward, being built outside the house, as is the habit in the region. It was the light of the waning moon, fitful, fluctuating, for clouds were astir. Now and then, too, Alethea could see the great morning star with its tremulous glister, seeming nearer, dearer, than all the others,—splendid, yet tender and full of promise. She looked wistfully at it for a moment, feeling the dull aching wound in her heart, and forgetting what dealt it. Then it all came back to her, and she wondered she had awakened again. She could not understand how she lived. She felt as if she could rise no more. But the cow was to be milked; she listened to the cocks crowing. The baby, who had developed a virulent habit of early rising, was already astir. She heard his thumping bare feet on the floor of the room below; he would be cold, and she thought of the danger of the embers, and remembered that the sluggard his mother still drowsed. The breakfast must be cooked, the dishes must be washed. Her physical strength was asserting itself against the shock to her mind. Her collapsed energies were recuperated by sleep, albeit the slumber induced by the primitive narcotics of the “yerb bag.” Ah, the world of Wild-Cat