'Let me go!' she wailed. 'My mother! my mother!'
'We will go together to her,' he answered; 'stay one moment.'
He put down the candle, and once more laid his hand on her head, and now he pressed it back with his left hand. Did she see in the dull eyes a gathering moisture, the rising of a tide? A tear ran down each of his rugged cheeks. Then he suddenly rose, and he struck her full in the forehead with his iron fist, heavy as a sledge hammer. She dropped in a heap on the floor.
'Glory! my own, own Glory!' he cried, and listened.
There was no answer.
'Glory! my love! my pride! my second self! my double!'
He caught her up, and she hung across his knee. He held his ear to her mouth and hearkened.
'Oh Glory! my own! my own!'
He stretched his hand above the mantelpiece and plucked down the chain and padlock; he secured the key. Then he cast the chain over his arm and drew the inanimate girl to him and held her in his firm grasp, and lifted her over his shoulder, and felt his way out at the door and down the steps.
No one was in the yard. No one on the pasture.