morphia, just enough to make you feel sleepy and stupid, and make the time pass a bit quicker."

For a long while he writhed and cried, telling her that it took all the wits that he had to keep awake enough to keep the devils off him without taking stuff to make him sleep, and that he was sure she'd never come back, and that he would very likely be left on the tree to rot or to fall into the water.

All that he said came so near to being true that it caused her the utmost pain to hear it. He was clever enough by instinct, not by thought, to know that mere idle cries could not torture her as did the true picture of the fears and dangers that encompassed him in his wild hiding-place. The endurance of this torture exhausted her as nothing had ever exhausted her before; yet all the time she never doubted but that the pain was his, and that she was merely a spectator.

She soothed him at last, not by gentleness and caresses—no such communication ever passed between them—but by plain, practical, hopeful suggestions spoken out clearly in the intervals of his whining. At length she esteemed it time to use the spur instead of stroking him any longer. "Get up on the tree, father, and I will give you the rest of the things when you are fixed on the branch. If Toyner's stirring again before I get home, he'll find means to keep me from coming to-morrow night. Climb up now. I'll give you the things. There—there isn't enough of the morphia drops to get you to sleep, only to make you feel easy; and here's the strips of blanket I've sewed together to tie yourself on with. It's nice and soft—climb up now and fix yourself. It's Toyner that will catch me, and you too, if I don't get back. Look at the moon—near the middle of the sky."

She established him upon the branch again with the comforts that she had promised, and then she gave him one thing more, of which she had not spoken before. It was a bag of food that would last, if need be, for several days.

He took it as evidence that she had lied to him in her assurance that she could return the next night. As she moved her boat out of the secret openings among the dead trees, she heard him whining with fear and calling a volley of curses after her.

That her father's words were all profane did not trouble Ann in the least. It was a meaningless trick of speech. Markham meant no more at this time by his most shocking oaths than does any man by his habitual expletive. Ann knew this perfectly. God knew it too.

Yet if his profanity was mechanical, the man himself was without trace of good. There was much reason that Ann's heart should be wrung with pity. It is the divine quality of kinship that it produces pity even for what is purely evil. Ann rowed her boat homeward with a hard determination in her heart to save her father at any cost.