"I guess he didn't do much of anything," Mrs. Barnard murmured, feebly; but Deborah did not seem to hear her.

Cephas opened his mouth as if perforce. "Well," he said, slowly, "we got to talkin'--"

"Talkin' about what?"

"About the 'lection. I think, accordin' to my reasonin', that what we eat had a good deal to do with it."

"What?"

"I think if you'd kept your family on less meat, and given 'em more garden-stuff to eat Barney wouldn't have been so up an' comin'. It's what he's eat that's made him what he is."

Deborah stared at Cephas in stern amazement. "You're tryin' to make out, as near as I can tell," said she, "that whatever my son has done wrong is due to what he's eat, and not to original sin. I knew you had queer ideas, Cephas Barnard, but I didn't know you wa'n't sound in your faith. What I want to know is, what has he done?"

Suddenly Charlotte sprang up, and pushed herself in between her father and Mrs. Thayer; she confronted Deborah, and compelled her to look at her.

"I'll tell you what he's done," she said, fiercely. "I know what he's done; you listen to me. He has done nothing--nothing that you've got to deal with him for. You needn't feel obliged to deal with him. He and father got into a talk over the 'lection, and they had words about it. He didn't talk any worse than father, not a mite. Father started it, anyway, and he knew better; he knew just how set Barney was on his own side, and how set he was on his; he wanted to pick a quarrel."

"Charlotte!" shouted Cephas.

"You keep still, father," returned Charlotte, with steady fierceness.

"I've never set myself up against you in my whole life before; but now I'm going to, because it's just and right. Father wanted to pick a quarrel," she repeated, turning to Deborah; "he's been kind of grouty to Barney for some time. I don't know why; he took a notion to, I suppose. When they got to having words about the 'lection, father begun it. I heard him. Barney answered back, and I didn't blame him; I would, in his place. Then father ordered him out of the house, and he went. I don't see what else he could do. And I don't blame him because he didn't go home if he didn't feel like it."

"Didn't he go away from here before nine o'clock?" demanded Deborah, addressing Charlotte at last.

"Yes, he did, some time before nine; he had plenty of time to go home if he wanted to."

"Where was he, then, I'd like to know?"

"I don't know, and I wouldn't lift my finger to find out. I am not afraid he was anywhere he hadn't ought to be, nor doin' anything he hadn't ought to."

"Didn't you stand out in the road and call him back, and he wouldn't come, nor even turn his head to look at you?" asked Deborah.

"Yes, I did," returned Charlotte, unflinchingly. "And I don't blame him for not coming back and not turning his head. I wouldn't if I'd been in his place."

"You'll have to uphold him a long time, then; I can tell you that,"

said Deborah. "He won't never come back if he's said he won't. I know him; he's got some of me in him."

"I'll uphold him as long as I live," said Charlotte.

"I wonder you ain't ashamed to talk so."

"I am not."

Deborah looked at Charlotte as if she would crush her; then she turned away.

"You're a hard woman, Mrs. Thayer, and I pity Barney because he's got you for a mother," Charlotte said, in undaunted response to Deborah's look.

"Well, you'll never have to pity yourself on that account," retorted Deborah, without turning her head.

The door opened softly, and a girl of about Charlotte's age slipped in. Nobody except Mrs. Barnard, who said, absently, "How do you do, Rose?" seemed to notice her. She sat down unobtrusively in a chair near the door and waited. Her blue eyes upon the others were so intense with excitement that they seemed to blot out the rest of her face. She had her blue apron tightly rolled about both hands.

Deborah Thayer, on her way to the door, looked at her as if she had been a part of the wall, but suddenly she stopped and cast a glance at Cephas. "What be you makin'?" she asked, with a kind of scorn at him, and scorn at her own curiosity.

Cephas did not reply, but he looked ugly as he slapped another piece of dough heavily upon a plate.

Deborah, as if against her will, moved closer to the table and bent over the pan of sorrel. She smelled of it; then she took a leaf and tasted it, cautiously. She made a wry face. "It's sorrel," said she.

"You're makin' pies out of sorrel. A man makin' pies out of sorrel!"

She looked at Cephas like a condemning judge. He shot a fiery glance at her, but said nothing. He sprinkled the sorrel leaves in the pie.

"Well," said Deborah, "I've got a sense of justice, and if my son, or any other man, has asked a girl to marry him, and she's got her weddin' clothes ready, I believe in his doin' his duty, if he can be made to; but I must say if it wa'n't for that, I'd rather he'd gone into a family that was more like other folks. I'm goin' to do the best I can, whether you go half way or not. I'm goin' to try to make my son do his duty. I don't expect he will, but I shall do all I can, tempers or no tempers, and sorrel pies or no sorrel pies."

Deborah went out, and shut the door heavily after her.

Chapter IV

After Deborah Thayer had shut the door, the young girl sitting beside it arose. "I didn't know she was in here, or I wouldn't have come in," she said, nervously.

"That don't make any odds," replied Mrs. Barnard, who was trembling all over, and had sunk helplessly into a rocking-chair, which she swayed violently and unconsciously.

Cephas opened the door of the brick oven, and put in a batch of his pies, and the click of the iron latch made her start as if it were a pistol-shot.

Charlotte got up and went out of the room with a backward glance and a slight beckoning motion of her head, and the girl slunk after her so secretly that it seemed as if she did not see herself. Cephas looked sharply after them, but said nothing; he was like a philosopher in such a fury of research and experiment that for the time he heeded thoroughly nothing else.

The young girl, who was Rose Berry, Charlotte's cousin, followed her panting up the steep stairs to her chamber. She was a slender little creature, and was now overwrought with nervous excitement. She fairly gasped for breath when she sat down in the little wooden chair in Charlotte's room. Charlotte sat on the bed. The two girls looked at each other--Rose with a certain wary alarm and questioning in her eyes, Charlotte with a dignified confidence of misery.

"I didn't sleep here last night," Charlotte said, at length.

"You went over to Aunt Sylvy's, didn't you?" returned Rose, as if that were all the matter in hand.

Charlotte nodded, then she looked moodily past her cousin's face out of the window.

"You've heard about it, I suppose?" said Charlotte.

"Something," replied Rose, evasively.

"I don't see how it got out, for my part. I don't believe he told anybody."

Rose flushed all over her little eager face and her thin neck. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it with a catch of her breath.

"I can't imagine how it got out," repeated Charlotte.

Rose looked at Charlotte with a painful effort; she clutched her hands tightly into fists as she spoke. "I was coming up here 'cross lots last night, and I heard you out in the road calling Barney," she said, as if she forced out the words.

"Rose Berry, you didn't tell!"