“I wasn't tryin' to hit 'er, Mandy, an' you know it.” It was Ralph Rundel's despondent and yet accusing voice which broke the pale stillness of the night. “I just want 'er to tell me the plain, unvarnished truth, an' she's got to! She cayn't be a wife o' mine an' carry on like that, an' do it underhand. I want to know if they met by agreement. I was on the hill an' saw Jeff waitin' at the creek ford. He had no business thar, an' stood behind the bushes, an' kept peepin' at our house till she come out an' went down to 'im. Then they walked to the spring an' set for a good hour, Jeff bent toward 'er, an' she was a-listenin' close, an' a-lookin' toward the house every minute like she was afeard somebody would come.” It was Amanda Wilks who now spoke as the startled boy put his feet on the floor and sat on the bed, grimly alert. “Looks like Rafe is axin' a reasonable enough question, Addie,” she was heard to say. “At least it seems so to me, an' I know I am tryin' to be fair to both sides, so I am.” “It _is_ fair,” Ralph passionately supplemented, “an' if she is honest an' wants to do right she will talk straight an' be as open as day. As my wife the law gives me the right to--” “Law? What's law amount to when a woman's plumb miserable?” Mrs. Rundel said, in a low, rebellious tone, and Paul heard her bare feet thump on the floor as she flounced about the room. “I hate you. I've hated you all along. I can't remember when I didn't hate you. No livin' woman with any refined feelin's could help it. I want liberty, that's all. I won't have you prowlin' about in the woods and watchin' me like a hawk every time a neighbor speaks decent to me. Lemme tell you some'n; you'd better never let Jeff Warren know you make charges ag'in' me like you are a-doin'. He'd thrash you 'in an inch o' your life, if you _are_ married to me. I'll not tell you why I happened to go down to the spring. That's _my_ business.” Paul heard his father utter a low, despairing groan as he left the room and stalked through the corridor and out at the front door. Going to the window, the boy looked out just as Ralph turned the corner and paused in the moonlight, his ghastly profile as clear-cut as if it had been carved in stone. Paul saw him raise his stiff arms to the sky, and heard him muttering unintelligible words. The window-sash was up, the sill low to the ground, and dressed only in his night-shirt, the boy passed through the opening and stood on the dewy grass. There he paused a moment, for he heard his aunt speaking to her sister admonishingly: “Rafe's jest got a man's natural pride an' jealousy. You know folks in a out-o'-the-way settlement like this will talk, an'--”