great stone in the two bed-coverings, and through the thin new ice of
the hole where Minnie had broken in had sunk them in the black depth
under the shelving rock. He was still asleep.

The door between the two chambers gave a faint sound as he opened it,
yet neither mother nor child moved. A moment passed, and he had reached
the bed. Another went by, and Isabel was awake, wildly but vainly trying
to scream, to rise. A knee was on her bosom, two hands grappled her
throat, and two out-starting eyes were close to hers. Her husband was
strangling her.

Then he too awoke. With a horrified cry he recoiled, and she, for the
first time in her life in a transport of terror, hurled him, in the
strength of her frenzy, to the farther side of the bed, and writhing out
on the opposite side, crept under it and lay still. In a torture of
bewilderment and remorse Arthur buried his face in the bedside. Then,
helpless to distinguish what he had done from what he had dreamed, he
sprang back to the place where Isabel had lain sleeping, and lo, it was
empty.

"Oh, was it thou, was it thou?" he wailed, in a stifled voice. "Was it
not he?"

Whispering and moaning her name, hearkening and groping, he sought her
from corner to corner, first of her room and then of his own, and then
went to the hall and to other rooms in the same harrowing quest.

Isabel crept forth and darted to her babe. Yet as she leaned to take it
in her arms her better judgment told her the child was safe. The husband
too, and every one beside, were safer from his jealous wrath while the