to-morrow, and it may not be best to tell him of all this at present.
It would only disturb him."

"Yes, mamma; I could not tell him everything as I have told you, and
so I must not tell him anything, nor anybody else. How wretched it all
is!"




CHAPTER IX.

A DARKENED SOUL.


As Julia left Bart, the full force of her scornful words seemed for
the first time to reach him. The great restraint her presence imposed
in some way suspended, or broke their effect, and he turned from the
gate with a half-uttered moan of anguish. He did not then recall her
words or manner; he only realized that, in a cruel and merciless way,
she had crushed his heart and soul. It was not long; both recoiled
with a sense of wrong and injustice, and utter helplessness, for the
hurt came from a woman. Instinctively he returned to the point whence
they had emerged when they left the woods, and the thought of the
screaming brute came to him with a sense of relief. Here was an object
upon which he could wreak himself, and in a half frenzy of madness he
hurried towards a spot in the edge of the Slashing, towards which
the cowardly thing had run when it fled from his onset. He paused
to listen upon the margin of that tangled wilderness of young trees,
briers, and decaying trunks. How solemn and quiet, wild and lonely it