complain; but Harold never guessed how much she made him suffer.
Home had become a wretched place to all, and Harold was more
alienated from it, making long expeditions, staying out as long and
as late as he could whenever business or pleasure called him away,
and becoming, alas, more headlong and reckless in the pursuit of
amusement. There were fierce hot words when he came home, and though
a tender respect for his uncle was the one thing in which he never
failed, the whole grand creature was being wrecked and ruined by the
wild courses to which home misery was driving him.

After about three years of this kind of life, Meg, much against his
will, went to her father's station for the birth of her second child;
lingered in the congenial atmosphere there far longer than was
necessary after her recovery, and roused Harold's jealousy to a
violent pitch by her demeanour towards a fellow of her own rank, whom
she probably would have married but for Harold's unfortunate
advantages, and whom she now most perilously preferred.

The jollification after the poor child's long-deferred christening
ended in furious language on both sides, Meg insisting that she would
not go home while "the old man" remained at Boola Boola, Harold
swearing that she should come at once, and finally forcing her into
his buggy, silencing by sheer terror her parents' endeavours to keep
them at least till morning, rather than drive in his half-intoxicated
condition across the uncleared country in the moonlight.

In the early morning Harold stood at their door dazed and bleeding,
with his eldest child crushed and moaning in his arms. Almost
without a word he gave it to the grandmother, and then guided the men
at hand, striding on silently before them, to the precipitous bank of