"His money grows like thistles. Where Swan touches the earth with the seed of it, money springs. Money is a disease that he spreads when he walks, like the scales that fall from a leper. Money! I pray God night and day that a plague will sweep away his flocks, that a thief will find his hiding place, that a fire will burn the bank that locks in his gold, and make him poor. Poor, he would be kind. A man's proud heart bends down when he is poor." "God help you!" said Mackenzie, pitying her from the well of his tender heart. "God is deaf; he cannot hear!" she said, bitter, hopeless, yet rebellious against the silence of heaven and earth that she could not penetrate with her lamentations and bring relief. "No, you shouldn't let yourself believe any such thing," he chided, yet with a gentleness that was almost an encouragement. "This land is a vacuum, out of which sound cannot reach him, then," she sighed, bending her sad head upon her hands. "I have cried out to him in a sorrow that would move a stone on the mountain-side, but God has not heard. Yes, it must be that this land is a vacuum, such as I read of when I was a girl in school. Maybe--" looking up with eager hopefulness--"if I go out of it a little way, just on the edge of it and pray, God will be able to hear my voice?" "Here, as well as anywhere," he said, moved by her strange fancy, by the hunger of her voice and face. "Then it is because there is a curse on me--the curse of Swan's money, of his evil ways!" She sprang up, stretching her long arms wildly. "I will pray no more, no more!" she cried. "I will curse God, I will curse him as Job cursed him, and fling myself from the rocks and die!" Mackenzie was on his feet beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he would stay her mad intention. "No, no!" he said, shocked by the boldness of her declaration. "Your troubles are hard enough to bear--don't thicken them with talk like this." She looked at him blankly, as if she did not comprehend, as though her reason had spent itself in this rebellious outbreak against the unseen forces of her sad destiny. "Where is your woman?" she asked. "I haven't any woman." "I thought she was your woman, but if she is not, Swan can have her. Swan can have her, then; I do not care now any more. Swan wants her, he speaks of her in the night. Maybe when he takes her he will set me free." Mrs. Carlson sat again near the lantern, curling her legs beneath her with the facility of a dog, due to long usage of them in that manner, Mackenzie believed, when chained to the wall in her lonely house among the trees. Mackenzie stood a little while watching her as she sat, chin in her hands, pensive and sad. Presently he sat near her. "Where is Swan tonight?" he asked. "Drinking whisky beside the wagon with Hector Hall. They will not fight. No."