"Oh, Jane, I was a fool them days," Joe Boyd broke in, with an actual flush of shame in his tanned face.

"Well, never mind about that," Jane went on, with a fresher determination under his own admission. "I reckon I let it take too strong a hold on me. I never could give up easy, and when you got to going with Ann, and she was so much prettier and more sprightly than me, it worked against my nature. It hardened me, I reckon. I married soon after you did, but I won't tell about that; he's dead and gone. I had my child-that was all, except-except my hate for Ann. I couldn't stand to see you and her so happy together, and you both were making money and I was losing what I had. Then, Joe, we all heard about-we all learned Ann's secret."

"Don't-for the love of mercy-don't fetch that up!" Boyd groaned.

"But I _have_ to, Joe," Jane persisted, softly. "At first I was the happiest woman that the devil ever delighted by flashing a lying promise with his fire on a wall. I thought you were going to scorn her, but I saw that day I met you at the meeting-house that you were inclined to condone the past, and that drove me wild; so I-" Jane choked up and paused.

"I remember that day," Joe Boyd said, with a deep breath. "I'll never forget it as long as I live, for what you said dropped me back into the bottomless pit of despair. I'd been trying to think she'd been straight with me _since_ we married, but when you-"

"What I told you that morning, Joe, was a cold, deliberate lie!"

"A-a-" he stammered. "No, no, you don't mean that-you can't mean-"

"Every-single-thing-I-told-you-that-day-was-a-lie!" Jane said, with an emphatic pause between each word.

"I can't understand. I don't see-really, Jane, you can't mean that what you said about Chester's going there day after day when my back was turned, and that you saw them together in the woods below your house that day when I was-"

"Everything I told you was a lie from the devil, out of the very fumes of h.e.l.l," Jane said, pulling off her bonnet and looking him squarely in the face. "A lie-a lie, Joe."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Boyd cried. "And I, all these years I have-"

"You've been believing what I said. But I'm not through yet. I've been in a dark room fasting and praying for a month to overcome my evil inclination not to speak the truth, and I finally conquered, so I'm going to tell the whole thing. Joe, Ann Boyd is the best woman G.o.d ever let live. She was as true as steel to you from the day she married till now. I have been after her day and night, never giving her a moment's rest from my persecutions, and how do you reckon she retaliated? She paid me back by actually saving my worthless life and trying to keep me from knowing who did it. She did something else. She did me the greatest favor one woman could possibly do another. I don't intend to say what that particular thing was, but she must have the credit. Now I'm through. I'm going back home."

Boyd drew his ill-clad feet towards him. He spread out his two arms wide and held them so, steadily. "Look at me-just look at me," he said.

"Woman, before you go back, take one good look at me. You come to me-a mere frazil of what I once was-when there is no hope of ever regaining my youth and self-respect-and tell me-oh, my G.o.d!-tell me that I believed _you_ instead of _her_! She said, with tears in her eyes, on her knees before me, that that first mistake was all, and I told her she lied _in her throat_, and left her, dragging from her clinging arms the child of her breast, bringing it up and raising it to what you see she is. And now you come literally peeping into my open coffin and telling _this_ to my dead face. Great G.o.d, woman, before Heaven I feel like striking you where you set, soaked in repentance though you are. All these misspent years I've been your cowardly tool, and her-her-"

"I deserve it-talk on!" Jane Hemingway said, as she rose and clutched her carpet-bag and held it tremblingly.

But Joe Boyd's innate gentleness had been one of the qualities many women loved, and even before the cowering creature who had wrecked his life he melted in manly pity.

"No," he said, stretching out his hand with something like one of his old gestures-"no, I'm going too far, Jane. We are all obedient to natural laws, as Ann used to say. Your laws have made you do just as you have, and so have mine. Away back there in the joy-time of youth my laws made me say too much to you. As you say, I planted the seed. I did; I planted the seed that bore all the fruit; I planted it when I kissed you, Jane, and said them things to you that night which I forgot the next day. Ann could have made something out of me better than this. As long as I had her to manage me, I did well. You see what I am now."

"Yes, I see; and I'm as sorry as I know how to be." Jane sighed as she pa.s.sed out into the open sunlight. "I'm going home, Joe. I may never lay eyes on you again in this life. If you can say anything to make me feel better, I'd be thankful."

"There isn't anything, except what I said just now about our natural laws, Jane," he said, as he stood shading his eyes from the glare of the sun. "Sometimes I think that n.o.body hain't to blame for nothing they do, and that all of this temporary muddle is just the different ways human beings have of struggling on to a better world beyond this."

"I thought maybe you might, in so many words, say plain out that you'd forgive me, Joe." She had turned her face towards the road she was to travel, and her once harsh lip was quivering like that of a weeping child.

"The natural law would come in there, too," Boyd sighed. "Forgiveness, of the right sort, don't spring to the heart in such a case as this like a flash of powder in the pan. If I'm to forgive, I will in due time, I reckon; but right now, Jane, I feel too weak and tired, even for that-too weak and heartsick and undone."

"Well, I'm going to pray for it, Joe," she said, as she started away.

"Good-bye. May the Lord above bless you."

"Good-bye, Jane; do the best you can," he said, "and I'll try to do the same."

x.x.xIX

The following Sunday afternoon Mrs. Waycroft hastened over to Ann Boyd's. She walked very rapidly across the fields and through the woods rather than by the longer main road. She found Ann in her best dress seated in her dining-room reading Luke King's paper, which had come the day before. She looked up and smiled and nodded to the visitor.

"I just wish you'd listen to this," she said, enthusiastically. "And when you've heard it, if you don't think that boy is a genius you'll miss it by a big jump. On my word, such editorials as this will do more good than all the preaching in Christendom. I've read it four times. Sit down and listen."

"No, you've got to listen to me," said the visitor. "That can wait; it's down in black and white, while mine is fairly busting me wide open. Ann, do you know what took place at meeting this morning?"

"Why, no, how could I? You know I said I'd never darken that door again, after that low-lived coward-"

"Stop, Ann, and listen!" Mrs. Waycroft panted, as she sank into a chair and leaned forward. "You know I go seldom myself, but by some chance I went this morning. I always feel like doing the best I can towards the end of a year. Well, I had hardly got my seat and Brother Bazemore had just got up to make some announcements, when who should come in but Jane Hemingway. Instead of stopping at her usual place, nigh the stove, she walked clean up to the altar-railing and stood as stiff as a post, gazing at the preacher. He was busy with his notes and didn't see her at first, though every eye in the house was fixed on her in wonder, for she was as white as a sheet, and so thin and weak that it looked like the lightest wind would blow her away. 'Brother Bazemore,' she said, loud enough to be heard, in her shrill voice, clean out to the horse-rack, 'I want to say something, and I want to say it out before all of you.'"

"Huh!" Ann grunted-"huh!"

"Well, he looked good surprised," Mrs. Waycroft went on, "but you know he's kind o' resentful if folks don't show consideration for his convenience, so he looked down at her over his specks and said:

"'Well, sister, I reckon the best time for that will be after preaching, and then them that want to stay can do so and feel that they got what they waited for.'

"'But I can't wait,' said she. 'What I've got to say must be said now, while I'm plumb in the notion. If I waited I might back out, and I don't want to do it.'

"Well, he give in; and, Ann, she turned around facing us all and took off her bonnet and swung it about like a flag. She was as nigh dead in looks as any corpse I ever saw. And since you was born, Ann, you never heard the like. Folks was so interested that they stared as if their eyes was popping out of their sockets. She said she'd come to confess to crime-that's the way she put it-_crime!_ She said she'd been pa.s.sing for half a lifetime in this community as a Christian woman, when in actuality she had been linked body and soul to the devil. Right there she gulped and stood with her old head down; then she looked at us like a crazy person and went on. She said away back when she was a girl she'd been jealous of a certain girl, and that she'd hounded that girl through a long life. She had made it her particular business to stir up strife against that woman by toting lies from one person to another. She turned sort o' sideways to the preacher and said: 'Brother Bazemore, what I told you Ann Boyd said about you that time was all made up-a lie out of whole cloth. I told you that to make you denounce her in public, and you did. I kept telling her neighbors things to make 'em hate her, and they did. I told her husband a whole string of deliberate lies that made him leave her and take her child away. I spent half my life at this thing, to have it end like this: Men and women, the woman that I was doing all that against was the one who came up with the money that saved my worthless life and tried to hide it from me and the rest of the world.

She not only done that, but she done me even a greater favor. I won't say what that was, but n.o.body but an angel from heaven, robed in the flesh of earth, could have done that, for it was the very thing she had every right to want to see visited on me. That act would have paid me back in my own coin, and she wanted to count out the money, but she was too much of heaven to go through it. Instead of striking at me, she saved me suffering that would have dragged me to the dust in shame. I've come here to say all this because I want to do her justice, if I can, while the breath of life is in me. I've just got back from Gilmer, where I went and met the man whose life I wrecked-her husband. I told him the truth, hoping that I could do him some good in atonement, but the poor, worn-out man seemed too utterly crushed to forgive me.'"

"Joe-she went to Joe!" Ann gasped, finding her voice. "Now, I reckon, he believes me. And to think that Jane Hemingway would say all that-do all that! It don't seem reasonable. But you say she actually-"

"Of course she did," broke in the narrator. "And when she was through she marched straight down the middle aisle and stalked outside. Half the folks got up and went to the windows and watched her tottering along the road; and then Brother Bazemore called 'em back and made 'em sit down.

He said, in his cold-blooded way, hemming and hawing, that the whole community had been too severe, and that the best way to get the thing settled and smooth-running again was to agree on some sort of public testimonial. Ann, I reckon fully ten men yelled out that they would second the motion. I never in all my life saw such excitement. Folks was actually crying, and this one and that one was telling kind things you had done to them. Then they all got around me, Ann, and they made a lots over me, saying I was the only one who had acted right, and that I must ask you to forgive them. That was the motion Bazemore put and carried by a vote of rising. Half of them was so anxious to have their votes counted that they climbed up on the benches and waved their hats and bonnets and shawls, and yelled out, 'Here! here!' Bazemore dismissed without preaching; it looked like he thought nothing he could say, in any regular line, would count in such a tumult. And after meeting dozens of 'em slid up to me and s.n.a.t.c.hed my hands and told me to speak a good word for them; they kept it up even after I'd got outside, some of 'em walking part of the way with me and sending messages. Wait till I catch my breath, and I'll tell you who spoke and what each one said, as well as I can."

"Never mind," said Ann, an absent look in her strong face. "I believe I'd rather not hear any more of it; it don't make one bit of difference one way or another."

"Why, Ann, surely you won't entertain hard feelings, now that they all feel so bad. If you could only 'a' been there, you would-"

"Oh, it isn't that," Ann sighed, and with her closed hand she pounded her heavy knee restlessly. "You see, Mary-oh, I don't know-but, well, I can't possibly be any way but the way the Lord made me, and to save my life I can't feel grateful. They all just seem to me like a lot of spoilt children that laugh or cry over whatever comes up. Somehow a testimonial from a congregation like that, after a lifetime of beating me and covering me with slime, seems more like an insult than a compliment. They think they can besmirch the best part of my life, and then rub it off in a minute with good intentions and a few words. Why, it was the same sort of whim that made them all follow Jane Hemingway like sheep after a leader. I don't hate 'em, you understand, but what they do or say simply don't alter my feelings a speck. I have known all along that I had the right kind of-character, and to listen to their sniffling testimony on the subject would seem to me like-well, like insulting my own womanhood."

"You are a powerful strange creature, Ann," Mrs. Waycroft said, reflectively, "but, I reckon, if you hadn't been that way you wouldn't be such a wonderful woman in so many ways. I was holding something back for the last, but I reckon you'll sniff at that more than what I've already told you. Ann, when I got home, and had just set down to eat a snack before running over to you, who should come to my back gate and call me out except Jane herself. She stood leaning against the fence like the walk had nearly done her up, and she refused to come in and set down. She said she wanted me to do her a favor. She said she knew I was at meeting and heard what she said, but that she wanted me to come to you for her. As G.o.d is my final Judge, I never felt such pity for a poor rotten shred of humanity in all my life. She looked like she was trying to cry, but was too dry inside to do anything but wheeze; her very eyes seemed to be literally on fire; she looked like a crazy person talking rationally. She said she wanted me to tell you how sorry and broke up she was, that she'd pay back that hundred dollars if she had to deed away her dead body to some medical college. She said she could do anything on earth to make amends _except_ go to you face to face and apologize-she'd walk from door to door all over the country, she said, and tell her tale of shame, but she couldn't say it to you. She said she had tried for weeks to do it, but she knew she'd never have the moral strength."

"She talked that way?" Ann said, looking steadily out into the sunshine through the open doorway.

"Yes; and I reckon you have as little patience with her message as you have with the balance," said the visitor.

"No, she's different, Mary," Ann declared. "Jane Hemingway is another proposition altogether. She's fought a long, fierce fight, and G.o.d Almighty's forces have whipped her clean out. She was a worthy foe, and I respect her more now than I ever did. She was different from the rest.

_She_ had a cause. _She_ had something to fight about. She loved Joe Boyd with all the heart she ever had, and when I married him she couldn't-simply couldn't-let it rest. She held on like a bull-dog with his teeth clamped to bone. She's beat; I won't wait for her to come to me; I may take a notion and go to her."

XL