Deborah answered not a word. She pursed her lips and knitted.

"She ain't, has she, mother?"

"Keep on with your corn," said Deborah; and that was all she would say.

Presently she arose and prepared dinner in the same dogged silence.

Caleb, and even Ephraim, watched her furtively, with alarmed eyes.

When Rebecca did not appear at the dinner-table Caleb did not say anything about it, but his old face was quite pale. He ate his dinner from the force of habit of over seventy years, during which time he had always eaten his dinner, but he did not taste it consciously.

He made up his mind that as soon as he got up from the table he would go over to Barney's and consult him. After he pushed his chair away he was slipping out shyly, but Deborah stopped him.

"Set down an' finish that corn. I don't want it clutterin' up the kitchen any longer," said she.

"I thought I'd jest slip out a minute, mother."

Deborah motioned him towards the chimney-corner and the baskets of corn with a stern gesture, and Caleb obeyed. Ephraim, too, settled down beside his father, and fell to shelling corn without being told.

He was quite cowed and intimidated by this strange mood of his mother's, and involuntarily shrank closer to his father when she passed near him.

Caleb and Ephraim both watched Deborah with furtive terror, as she moved about, washing and putting away the dinner-dishes and sweeping the kitchen.

They looked at each other, when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran to the window.

"She's gone to Barney's," he announced, rolling great eyes over his shoulder at his father; and the old man also went over to the window and watched Deborah plodding through the snow up the street.

It was not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a bitter wind was blowing from the northwest. It drove Deborah along before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned back upon it, and did not bend.

The road was not broken out, and the snow was quite deep, but she went along with no break in her gait. She went into Barney's yard and knocked at his door. She set her mouth harder when she heard him coming.

Barney opened the door and started when he saw who was there. "Is it you, mother?" he said, involuntarily; then his face hardened like hers, and he waited. The mother and son confronted each other looked more alike than ever.

Deborah opened her mouth to speak twice before she made a sound. She stood upright and unyielding, but her face was ghastly, and she drew her breath in long, husky gasps. Finally she spoke, and Barney started again at her voice.

"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca,"

she said.

"Mother, what do you mean?"

"I want you to go after William Berry and make him marry Rebecca."

"Mother!"

"Rebecca is gone. I turned her out of the house this mornin'. I don't know where she is. Go and find her, and make William Berry marry her."

"Mother, before the Lord, I don't know what you mean!" Barney cried out. "You didn't turn Rebecca out of the house in all this storm!

What did you turn her out for? Where is she?"

"I don't know where she is. I turned her out because I wouldn't have her in the house. You brought it all on us; if you hadn't acted so I shouldn't have felt as I did about her marryin'. Now you can go an'

find her, and get William Berry an' make him marry her. I ain't got anything more to do with it."

Deborah turned, and went out of the yard.

"Mother!" Barney called after her, but she kept on. He stood for a second looking after her retreating figure, struggling sternly with the snow-drifts, meeting the buffets of the wind with her head up; then he went in, and put on his boots and his overcoat.

Barney had heard not one word of the village gossip, and the revelation in his mother's words had come to him with a great shock.

As he went up the hill to the old tavern he could hardly believe that he had understood her rightly. Once he paused and turned, and was half inclined to go back. He was as pure-minded as a girl, and almost as ignorant; he could not believe that he knew what she meant.

Barney hesitated again before the store; then he opened the great clanging door and went in. A farmer, in a blue frock stiff with snow, had just completed his purchases and was going out. William, who had been waiting upon him, was quite near the door behind the counter. At the farther end of the store could be seen the red glow of a stove and Tommy Ray's glistening fair had. Some one else, who had shrunk out of sight when Barney entered, was also there.

Barney saw no one but William. He looked at him, and all his bewilderment gathered itself into a point. He felt a sudden fierce impulse to spring at him.

William looked at Barney, and his faced changed in a minute. He took up his hat, and came around the counter. "Did you want to see me?" he said, hoarsely.

"Come outside," said Barney. And the two men went out, and stood in the snow before the store.

"Where is Rebecca?" said Barney. He looked at William, and again the savage impulse seized him. William did not shrink before it.

[Illustration: "'Where is Rebecca?' said Barney"]

"What do you mean?" he returned. His lips were quite stiff and white, but he looked back at Barney.

"Don't you know where she is?"

"Before God I don't, Barney. What do you mean?"

"She left home this morning. Mother turned her out."

"Turned her out!" repeated William.

"Come with me and find her and marry her, or I'll kill you," said Barney, and he lashed out suddenly with his fist in William's face.

"You won't need to, for I'll kill myself if I don't," William gasped out. Then he turned and ran.

"Where are you going?" Barney shouted, rushing after him, in a fury.

"To put the horse in the cutter," William called back. And, indeed, he was headed towards the barn. Barney followed him, and the two men put the horse between the shafts. Once William asked, hoarsely, "Any idea which way?" and Barney shook his head.

"What time did she go?"

"Some time this forenoon."

William groaned.

The horse was nearly harnessed when Tommy Ray came running out from the store, and beckoned to Barney. "Rose says she see her going up the turnpike this morning," he said, in a low voice. "She was up in her chamber that looks over the turnpike, and she see somebody goin'

up the turnpike. She thought it looked like Rebecca, but she supposed it must be Mis' Jim Sloane. It must have been Rebecca."

"What time was it?" William asked, thrusting his white face between them. The boy turned aside with a gesture of contempt and dislike.

"About half-past ten," he answered, shortly. Then he turned on his heel and went back to the store. Rose was peering around the half-open door with a white, shocked face. Somehow she had fathomed the cause of the excitement.