"_For the hand of God hath touched me--_" he kept repeating over and over--repeating and then cursing himself for repeating it--for remembering it. And still it stayed there all day--the unbidden ghost-guest of his soul. And everything the old preacher said went searing into his quivering soul, and all the time he kept looking--looking at the woman he loved and seeing her giving her love, her life, with a happy smile, to another. And all the time he stood wondering why he came to see it, why he felt as he did, why things hurt him that way, why he acted so weakly, why his conscience had awakened at last, why life hurt him so--life that he had played with as an edged tool--why he could not get away from himself and his memory, but ran always into it, and why at last with a shudder, why did nothing seem to be beyond the wall? He saw her go off, the wife of another. He saw their happiness--unconscious even that he lived, and he cursed himself and kept saying: "_The hand of God hath touched me._" Then he laughed at himself for being silly. He rode home, but it was not home. Nothing was itself--not even he. In the watches of one night his life had been changed and the light had gone out. When night came it was worse. He mounted his horse and rode--where? And he could no more help it than he could cease to breathe. He did not guide the saddle mare, she went herself through wood sombre and dark with shadows, through cedar trees, dwarfed, and making pungent the night air with aromatic breath; through old sedge fields, garish in the faint light; up, up the mountain, over it; and at last the mare stopped and stood silently by a newly made grave, while Richard Travis, with strained hard mouth and wet eyes, knelt and, knowing that no hand in the world cared to feel his repentant face in it, he buried it in the new made sod as he cried: "Maggie--Maggie--forgive me, for the hand of God hath touched me!" And it soothed him, for he knew that if she were alive he might have lain his head there--on her breast. CHAPTER XVI MAMMY MARIA That Monday was a memorable day for Helen Conway. She went to the mill with less bitterness than ever before--the sting of it all was gone--for she felt that she was helpless to the fate that was hers--that she was powerless in the hands of Richard Travis: "_I will come for you Monday night. I will take you away from here. You shall belong to me forever--My Queen!_" These words had rung in her ears all Saturday night, when, after coming home, she had found her father fallen by the wayside. In the night she had lain awake and wondered. She did not know where she was going--she did not care. She did not even blush at the thought of it. She was hardened, steeled. She knew not whether it meant wife or mistress. She knew only that, as she supposed, God had placed upon her more than she could bear.