"Silence! I'll not have it!" Tim could look at her now, having a reason, as he saw it. There was a solid footing to his pretense at last. "It's a cheap way to get a thousand lambs," said she. "Then I've got 'em cheap!" said Tim, red in his fury. "You'll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in my face, and speak disrespectful----" "I spoke the truth, no word but the----" "I'll have no more out o' ye! It's home you go, and it's there you'll stay till you can trim your tongue and bend your mind to obey my word!" "You've got no right to take my sheep; you went into a contract with me, you ought to respect it as much as your word to anybody!" "You have no sheep, you had none. Home you'll go, this minute, and leave the sheep." "I hope they'll die, every one of them!" "Silence, ye! Get on that horse and go home, and I'll be there after you to tend to your case, my lady! I'll have none of this chargin' me to thievery out of the mouth of one of my childer--I'll have none of it!" "Maybe you've got a better name for it--you and old man Reid!" Joan scorned, her face still white with the cold, deep anger of her wrong. "I'll tame you, or I'll break your heart!" said Tim, doubly angry because the charge she made struck deep. He glowered at her, mumbling and growling as if considering immediate chastisement. Joan said no more, but her hand trembled, her limbs were weak under her weight with the collapse of all her hopes, as she untied and mounted her horse. The ruin of her foundations left her in a daze, to which the surging, throbbing of a sense of deep, humiliating, shameful wrong, added the obscuration of senses, the confusion of understanding. She rode to the top of the hill, and there the recollection of Mackenzie came to her like the sharp concern for a treasure left behind. She reined in after crossing the hilltop, and debated a little while on what course to pursue. But only for a little while. Always she had obeyed her father, under injunctions feeling and unfeeling, just and unjust. He was not watching to see that she obeyed him now, knowing well that she would do as he had commanded. With bent head, this first trouble and sorrow of her life upon her, and with the full understanding in her heart that all which had passed before this day was nothing but the skimming of light shadows across her way, Joan rode homeward. A mile, and the drooping shoulders stiffened; the bent head lifted; Joan looked about her at the sun making the sheeplands glad. A mile, and the short breath of anger died out of her panting lungs, the long, deep inspiration of restored balance in its place; the pale shade left her cold cheeks, where the warm blood came again. Joan, drawing new hope from the thoughts which came winging to her, looked abroad over the sunlit sheeplands, and smiled. CHAPTER XXII PHANTOMS OF FEVER