her belief that human life was sacred; and Byron’s crime, though easy to understand, was to her mind unpardonable. But Mrs. Tom’s attitude was not one of mere condemnation. That warm and pitiful heart had agonized through the dark hours over her friend’s fate, over the snatching away of that fag-end which was all Sabina had of life. Sabina who had been so trusting, so simple! Well, she had not known. She was saved that. She had carried her optimism with her, her fond belief that all would come right, that discomforts were only of the moment and that peace must follow, peace and affection. Good, she would have said, must prevail. Mrs. Tom, reviewing that sunny faith, that placid acceptance of weather conditions, both in life and with regard to the land, that wholesome jovial point of view, felt her gorge rise against the man who had lived with Sabina without loving her who, for his own ends, had done her to death. How had he dared? To that question Mrs. Tom could fit the answer. With Sabina living he could not hope to win Gray. Not because of Wastralls had he been moved to do this thing. Mrs. Tom, accustomed to the facile passions of the West, shrank from contemplation of an emotion so devastating. In a land where sexual lightness is looked on, not as sinful but inconvenient, where the village light-o’-love lives to a respected old age and the love-child has as many chances of success in life as he who bears his father’s name, such a passion as that of Byron for Gray is rare. Mrs. Tom, although she knew, could hardly believe. She was thankful there could be nothing in it, that Gray had made her choice; yet with that thankfulness went the pricking of a further doubt. If Byron had done so dire a deed in order to clear his path, how would he act when it was brought home to him that his deed was to make no difference, that the path was blocked for him beyond all clearing? Mrs. Tom was angry for Sabina, but for Gray she was afraid. Would Jim be able to protect her? He was, after all, only a young chap. Between her anger and her fear she hung in sore trouble until the hour struck that ushered in another workaday morning.