Deborah prayed on and on. The doctor and a throng of pale women came in; the yard was full of shocked and staring people. Deborah heeded nothing; she prayed on.

Some of the women got her into her own room. She stayed there, with a sort of rigid settling into the spot where she was placed and she pleaded with the Lord for upholding and justification until the daylight faded, and all night. The women, Mrs. Ray and the doctor's wife, who watched with poor Ephraim, heard her praying all night long. They sat in grave silence, and their eyes kept meeting with shocked significance as they listened to her. Now and then they wet the cloth on Ephraim's face. About two o'clock Mrs. Ray tiptoed into the pantry, and brought forth a mince-pie. "I found one that had been cut on the top shelf," she whispered. She and the doctor's wife ate the remainder of poor Ephraim's pie.

The two women stayed next day and assisted in preparations for the funeral. Deborah seemed to have no thought for any of her household duties. She stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and her praying voice could be heard at intervals.

Some other women came in, and they went about with silent efficiency, performing their services to the dead and setting the house in order; but they said very little to Deborah. When she came out of her room they eyed her with a certain grim furtiveness, and they never said a word to her about Ephraim.

It was already known all over the village that she had been whipping Ephraim when he died. Poor old Caleb, when the neighbors had come flocking in, had kept repeating with childish sobs, "Mother hadn't ought to have whipped him! mother hadn't ought to have whipped him!"

"Did Mrs. Thayer whip that boy?" the doctor had questioned, sharply, before all the women, and Caleb had sobbed back, hoarsely, "She was jest a-whippin' of him; I told her she hadn't ought to."

That had been enough. "She whipped him," the women repeated to each other in shocked pantomime. They all knew how corporal punishment had been tabooed for Ephraim.

The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral. The decent black-clad village people, with reddening eyes and mouths drooping with melancholy, came in throngs into the snowy yard. The men in their Sunday gear tiptoed creaking across the floors; the women, feeling for their pocket-handkerchiefs, padded softly and heavily after them, folded in their black shawls like mourning birds.

[Illustration: "The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral"]

Caleb and Deborah and Barney sat in the north parlor, where Ephraim lay. Deborah's hoarse laments, which were not like the ordinary hysterical demonstrations of feminine grief, being rather a stern uprising and clamor of herself against her own heart, filled the house.

The minister had to pray and speak against it; scarcely any one beyond the mourners' room could hear his voice. It was a hard task that the poor young minister had. He was quite aware of the feeling against Deborah, and it required finesse to avoid jarring that, and yet display the proper amount of Christian sympathy for the afflicted. Then there were other difficulties. The minister had prayed in his closet for a small share of the wisdom of Solomon before setting forth.

The people in the other rooms leaned forward and strained their ears.

The minister's wife sat beside her husband with bright spots of color in her cheeks, her little figure nervously contracted in her chair.

They had had a discussion concerning the advisability of his mentioning the sister and daughter in his prayer, and she had pleaded with him strenuously that he should not.

When the minister prayed for the afflicted "sister and daughter, who was now languishing upon a bed of sickness," his wife's mouth tightened, her feet and hands grew cold. It seemed to her that her own tongue pronounced every word that her husband spoke. And there was, moreover, a little nervous thrill through the audience. Oddly enough, everybody seemed to hear that portion of the minister's prayer quite distinctly. Even one old deaf man in the farthest corner of the kitchen looked meaningly at his neighbor.

The service was a long one. The village hearse and the line of black covered wagons waited in front of the Thayer house over an hour.

There had been another fall of snow the night before, and now the north wind blew it over the country. Outside ghostly spirals of snow raised from the new drifts heaped along the road-sides like graves, disappeared over the fields, and moved on the borders of distant woods, while in-doors the minister held forth, and the choir sang funeral hymns with a sweet uneven drone of grief and consolation.

When at last the funeral was over and the people came out, they bent their heads before this wild storm which came from the earth instead of the sky.

The cemetery was a mile out of the village; when the procession came driving rapidly home it was nearly sunset, and the thoughts of the people turned from poor Ephraim to their suppers. It is only for a minute that death can blur life for the living. Still, when the evening smoke hung over the roofs the people talked untiringly of Ephraim and his mother.

As time went on the dark gossip in the village swelled louder. It was said quite openly that Deborah Thayer had killed her son Ephraim. The neighbors did not darken her doors. The minister and his wife called once. The minister offered prayer and spoke formal words of consolation as if he were reading from invisible notes. His wife sat by in stiff, scared silence. Deborah nodded in response; she said very little.

Indeed, Deborah had become very silent. She scarcely spoke to Caleb.

For hours after he had gone to bed the poor bewildered old man could hear his wife wrestling in prayer with the terrible angel of the Lord whom she had evoked by the stern magic of grief and remorse. He could hear her harsh, solemn voice in self-justification and agonized appeal. After a while he learned to sleep with it still ringing in his ears, and his heavy breathing kept pace with Deborah's prayer.

Deborah had not the least doubt that she had killed her son Ephraim.

There was some talk of the church's dealing with her, some women declared that they would not go to meeting if she did; but no stringent measures were taken, and she went to church every Sunday all the rest of the winter and during the spring.

It was an afternoon in June when the doctor's wife and Mrs. Ray went into Deborah Thayer's yard. They paused hesitatingly before the door.

"I think you're the one that ought to tell her," said Mrs. Ray.

"I think it's your place to, seeing as 'twas your Ezra that knew about it," returned the doctor's wife. Her voice sounded like the hum of a bee, being full of husky vibrations; her double chin sank into her broad heaving bosom, folded over with white plaided muslin.

"Seems to me it belongs to you, as long as you're the doctor's wife,"

said Mrs. Ray. She was very small and lean beside the soft bulk of the other woman, but there was a sort of mental uplifting about her which made her unconscious of it. Mrs. Ray had never considered herself a small woman; she seemed always to see the tops of other women's heads.

The doctor's wife looked at her dubiously, panting softly all over her great body. It was a warm afternoon. The low red and white rose-bushes sprayed all around the step-stone, and they were full of roses. The doctor's wife raised the brass knocker. "Well, I'd just as lieves," said she, resignedly. "She'd ought to be told, anyway; the doctor said so." The knocker fell with a clang of brass.

Deborah opened the door at once. "Good-afternoon," said she.

"We thought we'd come over a few minutes, it's so pleasant this afternoon," said the doctor's wife.

"Walk in," said Deborah. She aided them in through the kitchen to the north parlor. She always entertained guests there on warm afternoons.

The north parlor was very cool and dark; the curtains were down, and undulated softly like sails. Deborah placed the big haircloth rocking-chair for the doctor's wife, and Mrs. Ray sat down on the sofa.

There was a silence. The doctor's wife flushed red. Mrs. Ray's sharp face was imperturbable. Deborah, sitting erect in one of her best flag-bottomed chairs, looked as if she were alone in the room.

The doctor's wife cleared her throat. "Mis' Thayer," she began.

Deborah looked at her with calm expectation.

"Mis' Thayer," said the doctor's wife, "Mis' Ray and I thought we ought to come over here this afternoon. Mis' Ray heard something last night, an' she came over an' told the doctor, an' he said you ought to know--"

The doctor's wife paused, panting. Then the door opened and Caleb peered in. He bowed stiffly to the two guests; then, with apprehensive glances at his wife, slid into a chair near the door.

"Mis' Ray's Ezra told her last night," proceeded the doctor's wife, "that the night before your son died he run away unbeknown to you, an' went slidin' down hill. The doctor says mebbe that was what killed him. He said you'd ought to know."

Deborah leaned forward; her face worked like the breaking up of an icy river. "Be you sure?" said she.

"Ezra told me last night," interposed Mrs. Ray. "I had a hard time gettin' it out of him; he promised Ephraim he wouldn't tell. But somethin' he said made me suspect, an' I got it out of him. He said Ephraim told him he run away, an' he left him there slidin' when he came home. 'Twas as much as 'leven o'clock then; I remember I give Ezra a whippin' next mornin' for stayin' out so late. But then, of course, whippin' Ezra wa'n't nothin' like whippin' Ephraim."

"The doctor says most likely that was what killed him, after all, an'

you'd ought to know," said the doctor's wife.

"Be you sure?" said Deborah again.

"Ephraim wa'n't to blame. He never had no show; he never went a-slidin' like the other little fellers," said Caleb, suddenly, out of his corner; and he snivelled as he spoke.

Deborah turned on him sharply. "Did you know anything about it?" said she.

"He told me on 't that mornin'," said Caleb; "he told me how he'd been a-slidin', an' how he eat some mince-pie."

"Eat--some--mince-pie!" gasped Deborah, and there was a great light of hope in her face.

"Well," said the doctor's wife, "if that boy eat mince-pie, an' slid down hill, too, I guess you ain't much call to worry about anything you've done, Mis' Thayer. I know what the doctor has said right along."

The doctor's wife arose with a certain mild impressiveness, as if some mantle of her husband's authority had fallen upon her. She shook out her ample skirts as if they were redolent of rhubarb and mint.

"Well, I guess we had better be going," said she, and her inflections were like the doctor's.

Mrs. Ray rose also. "Well, we thought you'd ought to know," said she.

"I'm much obliged to you," said Deborah.