This awakening and lashing into action, by the terrible pressure of circumstances, of strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond his simple comprehension.

He shook his head with a fierce helplessness and went into the barn.
"Go in and get the supper," he ordered, "and _I_'ll take care of the mare." As Madelon came out of the stall he grasped her roughly by the arm and peered sharply into her face.

The thought seized him that she must surely not be in her right mind--that Burr's treatment of her and his danger had turned her brain.

"Be you crazy, Madelon ?" he asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of doubt and pity in his voice.
"No, father," she replied, "I am not crazy.

Let me go." She broke away from him and was out of the barn door, but suddenly she turned and came running back.