"I will give you eggs, you can cook them at a fire," she said, "and bread I will give you, but butter I cannot give. That I have not tasted since I came to this land, four years ago, a bride." She moved about to get the food, walking with awkwardness on the foot that had dragged the chain so long, laughing a little at her efforts to regain a normal balance. "Soon it will pass away, and I will walk like a lady, as I once knew how." "But I don't want to cook at a fire," Mackenzie protested; "I want you to make me some coffee and fry me some eggs, and then we'll see about things." She came close to him, her great gray eyes seeming to draw him until he gazed into her soul. "No; you must go," she said. "It will be better when Swan comes that nobody shall be here but me." "But you! Why, you poor thing, he'll put that chain on you again, knock you down, for all I know, and fasten you up like a beast. I'm not going; I'll stay right here till he comes." "No," shaking her head in sad earnestness, "better it will be for all that I shall be here alone when he comes." "Alone!" said he, impatiently; "what can you do alone?" "When he comes," said she, drawing a great breath, shaking her hair back from her face, her deep grave eyes holding him again in their earnest appeal, "then I will stand by the door and kill him with the ax!" CHAPTER II SWAN CARLSON Mackenzie found it hard to bend the woman from this plan of summary vengeance. She had suffered and brooded in her loneliness so long, the cruel hand of Swan Carlson over her, that her thoughts had beaten a path to this desire. This self-administration of justice seemed now her life's sole aim. She approached it with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks; she had lived for that hour. Harshly she met Mackenzie's efforts at first to dissuade her from this long-planned deed, yielding a little at length, not quite promising to withhold her hand when the step of her savage husband should sound outside the door. "If you are here when he comes, then it will do for another night; if you are gone, then I will not say." That was the compromise she made with him at last, turning with no more argument to prepare his supper, carrying the ax with her as she went about the work. Often she stood in rigid concentration, listening for the sound of Swan's coming, such animation in her eyes as a bride's might show in a happier hour than hers. She sat opposite her visitor as he made his supper on the simple food she gave him, and told him the story of her adventure into that heartless land, the ax-handle against her knee.