“It was when I was a little girl—a very little girl. There was a big terrible boy—a young man, rather—who lived down the road—ugly and horrible as a hyena. And one day—when Papa was gone—and I was playing—he came along and he spoke to me with a grin and a—a funny look in his eyes. And he took hold of me—it was like a snake! and I tried to break loose—and my little brother fought him. But he knocked and kicked Keith down—and took me up and carried me away. I fought and screamed but he put his hand over my mouth and almost smothered me—and kept on running—then—then——” Then there was a hush so deep that RoBards felt he could hear his tears where they struck the carpet under his feet. His eyelids were locked in woe, but he seemed to see what she thought of; he seemed to see the frightened eyes of Ernest Chirnside trying not to understand. Immy went on: “Then Jud Lasher heard Papa coming and he ran. Papa caught him and beat him almost to death—but it was too late to save me. I didn’t understand much, then. But now—! Papa made me promise never to speak of it; but you have a higher right than anybody, Ernest—that is, if you still—unless you—oh, tell me!—speak!—say something!” The boy spoke with an unimaginable wolfishness in his throat: “Where is the man?—where is that man?” “I don’t know. I never saw him after that—oh, yes, he came back again once. But Papa was watching and saved me from him—and after that I never heard of him. Yes, I did hear someone say he went to sea.” Another hush and then Ernest’s voice, pinched with emotion: “I believe if I could find that villain I could almost kill him. My soul is full of murder. God forgive me!” He thought of his own soul first. Poor Immy suffered the desolation of a girl who finds her hero common clay; her saint a prig. But with apology she said: “I ought never to have told you.” He dazed her by his reply: “Oh, I won’t tell anybody; never fear! But don’t tell me any more just now. I must think it out.” He wanted to think!—at a time when thinking was poltroon; when only feeling and impulsive action were decent! Immy waited while he thought. At length he said: “If that man still lives he’ll come back again!” “No! no!” “He’ll come back and get you.” “You wouldn’t let him, would you?” “You belong to him, in a way. It is the Lord’s will.” He could say that and believe it! The young zealot could worship a god who could doom, ten thousand years before its birth, a child to a thousand, thousand years of fiery torment because of an Adam likewise doomed to his disobedience. The young man’s own agony had benumbed him perhaps, but RoBards could have leapt from the window and strangled him as a more loathsome, a clammier reptile than Jud Lasher. But he, too, was numb with astonishment. Then the boy went human all at once and began to sob, to wail, “Oh, Immy, Immy! my poor Immy!”