In the middle of the night he woke up feeling quite differently. A sick and guilty horror overwhelmed him. He must have been delirious the day before, light-headed with pain and misery. Now he saw clearly what he had done. He was a thief. He had committed a terrible sinbroken one of the Ten Commandments. He might be caught and put in prison, anyhow, the God who said, "Thou shalt not" would punish him and perhaps Bessie too. The sweat poured down Robert's forehead and off his cheeks. The future seemed to be closing in upon him with iron walls. He trembled, cowered, and would have said, "Our Father" if he dared. Oh God, why had he done this dreadful thing?"May be you have; but that matters little; I know you are an honest man, and were I even your enemy, you would not betray me."He lifted her bodily and laid her on the bed. But she was still half insaneReuben still dreamed of that Fair-place, and occasionally schemed as well; but everything short of the death of the Squireand his sonseemed useless. However, he now had the rest of Boarzell in such a state of cultivation that he sometimes found it possible to forget the land that was still unconquered. That year he bought a hay-elevator and a steam-reaper. The latter was the first in the neighbourhoodnever very go-ahead in agricultural mattersand quite a crowd collected when it started work in the Glotten Hide, to watch it mow down the grain, gather it into bundles, and crown the miracle by tying these just as neatly as, and much more quickly than, a man."Pete!" he cried chokingly"I won't die!I won't die!"