was living, but there was a strange silent vehemence and fire about
her which seemed louder than speech. Now and then her father and her
brothers started and stared at her as if she had cried out. Two red
spots had come on her brown cheeks; her eyes were glittering with
dark light; her lips were a firm red; her fingers stiffened with
nervous clutches. She looked as if every muscle in her were strained
and rigid for a leap.

After dinner Eugene and Abner went out again with their guns, and
David smoked his old pipe by the fire, while Madelon put away the
dishes and swept the floor. When her work was finished the pipe was
smoked out, and David rose up slowly, clapped his fur cap over his
white head, and took up his axe.

"Mind ye say what ye said this morning to nobody else," he said, as
he went out the door.

"I'll say it with my dying breath," returned Madelon, and she caught
her breath, as if it were indeed her last, as she spoke.

"Accuse yourself of murder, would ye, and be hung, and leave your own
kith and kin with nobody to keep house for them, for the sake of a
man that's left ye for another girl!"

"Father, I tell you that _I_ did it!"

But David clapped to the door on her speech, and the awful truth of
it seemed to smite her in her own face.

Madelon went up-stairs, and brushed and braided her black hair before