Even at this instant in her gloomy retrospection, she could put her finger on her own bosom, precisely where the bullet had struck. That reddish-purple spot that did not bleed. Very often the vision of that small, round death-sore multiplied and floated in one gesticulating mirage before her eyes. Often they consolidated into one compact darkish background, against which would develop the satanic, puffed visage of the revenuer who had done this thing. When old Cap Lutts' spirit went out by the same hand, the girl's soul had sickened to a distortion of mingled fear and hate, which at times bade fair to drive her primitive mind bereft. A devouring monitor of revenge had skulked into her life, following her better self relentlessly, as a panther stalks a spent beast. To her it was all like the happening of the past hour. Three weeks only had elapsed since she had witnessed the last withering stroke of this evil creature bent upon their destruction. Across her every mood the prickling echoes of that frantic bell-scream raked. It filled her ears when she strove to shut it out, and projected its curse into her slumbering hours. She felt that unhallowed hour upon her--the moonlit night when the very trees shuddered as she and little Buddy, clinging to each other, had crept through the ghastly shadows back to the meeting-house after the mad bell's appeal had died and the demon had gone. Never, while reason held its throne, could she obliterate from her eyes what they two saw in the church that night. So it was that Belle-Ann had long since, secretly, reared a citadel within her, and down in a remote grotto therein, had locked away her love; isolated it from her impulses and fealty. With valiant, tender delicacy, she always tried not to sully and overshadow Lem's life with this that she knew was in her. She knew that Lem had a cross of his own to bear. Although she fancied, as humans are prone to do, that his burden did not parallel her own. But she would not contaminate the boy's love with the presence of this red-rare oath sticking like a projectile in her being. This rubric, monastic avowal of vengeance that now hung in her soul like a garnet etching. But always she prayed that God might direct Lem to avenge her, and thus tear down this phantom picture that overshadowed her life, and thereby redeem her peace.