Except, perhaps, that loutish son! Oh, how could she abide another day under the same roof with him? But even he might perhaps be avoided. She would do her best.

 So she tried to cheer herself and scrubbed with a right good will till her young back ached and her arms, all unaccustomed to such violent exercise, began to tremble. Still, white with weariness and faint for lack of food, because she had been too excited to eat, she slaved on through the afternoon work; over the hot stove, cooking the supper which she was too fatigued again to eat; thankful only that she was allowed to remain in the kitchen and cook rather than to serve at the table with those awful men. She came at last to the time when, the dishes done, she might hang up her dish towels and creep up the stairs to her room. One horror she had been spared to-night. Sylvester had taken himself off after supper, and she had not been bothered by his attentions. Heinrich, of the gray stubbly hair, had established himself ominously in the kitchen doorway and barred all approaches of any of the men. She disliked him with all her heart, but she could not but be grateful to him whatever his motive might be.

She had asked for a. candle and was given a small bit grudgingly. With this flickering uncertain light, she tried to write to her mother and uncle, but before she had half finished her mother's letter the candle flickered down to the socket and went out, and her aching back and arms cried out for rest. Sleep was heavy on her eyelids, too, and she knew she had not written what she meant. Besides, it was hard, now she was at it, to tell her mother what kind of a place she was in. Supposing there was no way out. Supposing she must stay here awhile. There was no need to make her mother anxious. She had enough trouble already. No, she must write to her uncle.

 She groped to her window sill and with only the starlight to guide her, she scrawled a few lines to her uncle, slipped them in an envelope, sealed, addressed and stamped it, and laid it ready for mailing in the morning. Then she went to her bed.

 Sleep was her master now, and she had no chance for the heavy problems she had meant to think out on her pillow. She sank at once into a deep, exhausted slumber that seemed to end almost at once with the sharp voice of her mistress in her ear and the merciless grip of duty on her tired young shoulder. She woke with the consciousness of the inevitable that had her in its power. She had heard of Prussianism, but she did not know that she was beginning to experience it.

When she went down in the morning she took her letters and asked Mrs. Schwarz how she should mail them. She was told to lay them on the table and “he” would see to them. Hilda had a. feeling that they had fallen into an abyss, as from the distance of the kitchen she saw her letters swept up in the elder Schwarz's big gnarled fist. Instinctively, she felt they might never reach their destination. Surely not until they had passed the censorship of this household tyrant. She spent the day trying to devise a means by which she might mail her own letters, or at least send a telegram. She was beginning to feel virtually a prisoner on this farm.

 Yet there was little time to think. She was driven from one duty to another, and the sudden violent plunge into unwonted labor had made her so stiff and sore in every joint that she could scarcely move without pain.

Three age-long days and three more nights, all too short for resting, passed, with only the sound of the friendly freight whistle to mark the daylight, and the rumble of the midnight freight through her dreams for comfort.