"You can minister to me."
"So I do."
"And you can pity me."
"Pity you!" with scorn.
"Aye. I am to be pitied, for here am I doing all I can to win the heart of a perverse and stubborn girl, and I meet with nothing but contempt and hate. I am to be pitied. I am a man; I love you, and am defied and repulsed, and fled from as though I had the pestilence, and my house were a plague hospital."
"Will you let me attend to your brother?"
"No, I will not."
The shutter was dashed off its hinges, flung out into the yard, and the two ghastly hands were again seen strained through the bars. Again there rang out in the gathering night the piteous cry, "Glory! Glory! Glory! "
"By God! you hound," yelled Elijah, and he raised his whip to bring it down in its all cutting force on the white wrists.
"I cannot bear it. I will not endure it!" cried Mehalah, and she arrested the blow. She caught the stick and wrenched it out of the hand of Rebow before he could recover from his surprise, and broke it over her knee and flung it into the dyke that encircled the yard. There was, however, no passion in her face, she acted deliberately, and her brown cheek remained unflushed. "I take his cry as an appeal to me, and I will protect him from your brutality."
"You are civil," sneered Elijah. "What are you in this house? A servant, you say. Then you should speak and act as one. No, Glory! you know you are not, and cannot be, a servant. You shall be its mistress. I forgive you what you have done, for you are asserting your place and authority. Only do not cry out and protest if in future I speak to the workmen of you as the mistress."
A hard expression settled on Mehalah's brow and eyes. She turned away.
"Are you going? Have you not a parting word, mistress?"
"Go!" she said, in a tone unlike that usual with
