Next morning, with tears in her eyes, she told the doctor of the change that had come over his patient.  The doctor tried his pulse and looked puzzled.  He ordered Learoyd a soothing draught, but it had no effect.  All through the day his agony was frightful to witness.  He sat with glowering eyes gazing at the verse which had destroyed his peace of mind.  Mary tried to take the Bible from him but, with an oath, he refused to give it up.  The day was a busy one for her.  Learoyd’s man-servant had gone with a flock of sheep and lambs to a distant moor, and the duties of feeding the stock and milking the cows fell to her.  The farmer preserved a sullen silence while she was in the house, but no sooner was she outside than his muttering began.

“Coals o’ fire, aye, that’s what shoo’s heapin’ on me, coals o’ hell fire; they’re burnin’ my heart to a cinder.  It’s vengeance shoo’s after; shoo favours her mother.  All women are just t’ same.  She-devils, that’s what they are.  Shoo sal have her vengeance, sure enough, an’ then mebbe t’ coals o’ fire will burn her as they’re burnin’ me.”  A red-hot cinder fell into the grate as he spoke, and Learoyd gazed at it with curious intentness until it had lost all its glow.

“I’ll fotch t’ halter out o’ t’ kist, an’ I’ll do it,” he began once more.  “Shoo san’t torment me no longer:  t’ coals o’ fire sal be upon her own heead.”

Here he lapsed into morose silence, and Mary, re-entering the farm kitchen shortly afterwards, found him, as she had left him, gazing intently into the fire with the Bible open on his knees.  She got tea ready, but Learoyd stubbornly refused to eat or drink anything, and when at last ten o’clock came the farmer roused himself from his lethargy and stole off to bed, casting furtive glances at Mary as he passed through the door.  She wisely refrained from intruding herself upon him that night, but, climbing the stairs to her bedroom, listened for sounds in the adjoining chamber.  She could hear Learoyd muttering to himself, and she noticed that he was quicker in getting into bed than usual.  A suspicion crossed her mind that he had not undressed, and this confirmed the idea which she had formed earlier in the evening that some secret purpose was maturing in his mind.  Sleep was not to be thought of, and so, without taking off her clothes, she got into bed and listened.

Two hours passed, and all the time she heard Learoyd groaning in his bed.  Then he got up, struck a light, and remained still for a moment as though he were listening for any sound that might come from her room.  Then she heard him open the door of his bedroom and creep, candle in hand, along the passage.  As he passed her door he stopped, and Mary held her breath lest he should discover that she was awake and listening for every sound.  Apparently satisfied that she was asleep, the farmer descended the stairs to the kitchen.  Mary noiselessly crept out of bed and, lifting the latch of her bedroom door, stood