When Quarry’s touch fell on him, he cried out, “O Emma, Emma! am I dead, that I can not hear you? Is your voice gone behind the sky, that you hold your mouth yet? Is your hand cut off you? Don’t marry Quarry till I am home again! Emma, tell me where you are. It is all black inside me!” Emma leaped to him. She was “swift as a wicked cat,” Quarry told her later on when he cursed her. She hurt him cruelly, but Jarlsen smiled, and his blackened face grew brighter. “I shall not marry until Heaven--” she vowed, but he could not hear. The pain of her embrace was fearful, but she clung fast, and called out in her big voice the loyalty he longed for and that he felt in the suffering her strong arms caused him, even though he could not hear. And then Jerry touched her. “I’m afraid he’s fainted,” he said, as though he apologized. IV. QUARRY THE SCHEMER. “The winged word of spite outstrips a kindness.” EMMA was too tired to feel her unhappiness, and too relieved, now that everything was over, to feel her loneliness very much. The blast rite had somehow robbed her of her hope of Jarlsen’s recovery, and established the idea of his death in her mind. Jeremy Black nursed him at first, after her outburst. In the neighbours’ phrase, he “turned and fed the poor blast.” Emma’s crude nature found a pleasure--never before known to her--in food, and in lying on the lean-to floor and thanking God that her barber days were over. Her voice was harsh and loud; she had always hidden it from Jarlsen. To-day she sang and was not ashamed. Then Black went mysteriously to the city. This might mean New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, or some nearer, smaller town than either of these. He left at the beginning of the drought, and Emma, with the rest of his townspeople, envied him sorely. Her resumed service to Jarlsen was automatic. He spoke, but she did not listen; she was afraid of being hurt if she heard his words. The drought made her double work, for her patient drank a great deal of water, and refused it with a wearied patience if it were not cold. She often went at noon to the Bridge well, her tin dipper growing burning hot beneath a sun that made the mica specks shine in the roadside dust. She lagged heavily down the hill, the people greeting her and she answering without knowledge of what they said. She had learned that forgetfulness is the better part of wisdom. She could not ignore Quarry; he was merciless. On Sunday she went at six for Jarlsen’s drink from the well. She had a handful of oatmeal to put in it; and, as she leaned over and caught the dripping bucket, she heard Quarry’s voice in the alder thicket that smelt sweet with the heavy dew on it.