so cruel. You plan it all out so--how can you?"

Nevertheless, with a last convulsive hug and a broken "Mother
can't help it, darling," she put Billy on his feet, her tormented
heart wrung with bitterness as Martin took the clinging child
from her and carried him away, hysterical and resisting.

"What else could I do?" she asked herself miserably, stabbed by
the added fear that Billy might not forgive her. Could he
understand how powerless she had been?

When once more the child was cuddled against her, she realized
that in some mystical way there was a new bond between them, and
as the days passed, she discovered it was not so much the
whipping, but the unnatural perfidy of Dorcas that had scarred
his mind. With his own eyes he had seen a mother devour her baby.
He woke from dreams of it at night. Even the sight of her in the
pasture contentedly suckling the remaining nine did not reassure
him. The modern methods of psychology were then, to such women as
Rose, a sealed book, but love and intuition taught her to apply
them.

"You see, Billy," she explained, "hogs are meant to eat meat like
dogs or bears or tigers. But they can live on just grain and
grass, and that is what most farmers make them do because there
is so much more of it and it costs so much less. Some of them
feed what is called tankage. If old Dorcas could have had some of
that she probably would not have eaten the little pig. You
mustn't blame her too much, for she was just famishing for flesh,
the way you are, sometimes, for a drink of water, when you've