For the second time a dark and frowning mountain had risen between Martin and me. Formerly it had been my marriage—now it was my God.

But if God forbade my marriage with Martin what was I to do? What was left in life for me? Was there anything left?

I was sitting with both hands over my face, asking myself these questions and struggling with a rising tempest of tears, when I heard baby crying in the room below, and Christian Ann hushing and comforting her.

"What's doing on the boght, I wonder?"

A few minutes later they came upstairs, Isabel on her grandmother's arm, in her nightdress, ready for bed.

"If it isn't the wind I don't know in the world what's doing on the millish," said the old lady.

And then baby smiled through the big round beads that stood in her sea-blue eyes and held out her arms to me.

Oh God! Oh God! Was not this my answer?


ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEENTH CHAPTER