"Do not look, Betty," she said quietly. "I do not. It is a horror to me—a horror. I am going back," she said, turning. But she had reckoned without Margery, who caught her by the arm. "Come," she said imperiously. "Come and see the breaking heart!" Patricia hesitated, then yielded to curiosity and the insistent pressure of the skeleton fingers. The cabins nearest them were deserted, their occupants having joined themselves to the groups further down the lane where the firelight beat strongest and the torches were more numerous. With no more sound than a moth would make, flitting through the dusk, the mad woman led them to the outermost of these cabins. Within five paces of the door she stopped and pointed a long forefinger. "The breaking heart!" she said in a triumphant whisper. A man lay, face downwards, in the coarse and scanty grass. One arm was bent beneath his forehead, the other was outstretched, the hand clenched. It was the attitude of one who has flung himself down in dumb, despairing misery. As they looked, he gave a long gasping sob that shook his whole frame, then lay quiet. A burst of revelry came down the lane. The man raised his head impatiently, then let it drop again upon his arm. Patricia turned and walked quickly back the way they had come. Betty and Sir Charles followed her; Margery, her whim gratified, had vanished into the darkness of the pines. No one spoke until they were again amidst the wet and rustling corn. Then said Betty with tears in her voice, "O Patricia, darling! there is so much misery in the world, fair and peaceful as it looks to-night. That poor man!" "That ’poor man,’ Betty," answered Patricia in a hard voice, "is a criminal, a felon, guilty of some dreadful, sordid thing, a gaol-bird reclaimed from the gallows and sent here to pollute the air we breathe." "It was the convict, Landless, was it not?" asked Sir Charles. "Yes." "But, Patricia," said the gentle Betty, "whatever he may have done, he is wretched now." "He has sowed the wind; let him reap the whirlwind," said Patricia steadily. They went on to the house and into the great room where the myrtle candles were burning softly, the dimity curtains shutting out the night. Mrs. Lettice was at the spinet, with Captain Laramore to turn the leaves of her song book, and the Governor, with the chess table out and the pieces in battle array, awaited (he said) the arrival of the Princess of the Castle in the Air. *CHAPTER V* *IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD* In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plant after tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or "suckers" from the parent stem.