ngalow."

"You was?"

"Yes."

A pause. Then: "Emeline, there's no use your tellin' me what ain't so.
I know more than you think I do, maybe. If you was drivin' home why did
you take the Denboro road?"

"The Denboro road? Why, we only went on that a ways. Then we turned off
on what we thought was the road to the Lights. But it wa'n't; it must
have been the other, the one that goes along by the edge of the
Back Harbor and the Slough, the one that's hardly ever used. Seth,"
indignantly, "what do you mean by sayin' that I told you what wa'n't so?
Do you think I lie?"

"No. No more than you thought I lied about that Christy critter."

"Seth, I was always sorry for that. I knew you didn't lie. At least I
ought to have known you didn't. I--"

"Wait. What did you take the Denboro road at all for?"

"Why--why--Well, Seth, I'll tell you. Bennie wanted to talk to me.
He had come on purpose to see me, and he wanted me to do somethin'
that--that . . . Anyhow, he'd come to see me. I didn't know he was
comin'. I hadn't heard from him for two years. That letter I got
this--yesterday mornin' was from him, and it most knocked me over."

"You hadn't HEARD from him? Ain't he been writin' you right along?"

"No. The fact is he left me two years ago without even sayin' good-by,
and--and I thought he had gone for good. But he hadn't," with a sigh,
"he hadn't. And he wanted to talk with me. That's why he took the other
road--so's he'd have more time to talk, I s'pose."

"Humph! Emeline, answer me true: Wa'n't you goin' to Denboro to get--to
get a divorce from me?"

"A divorce? A divorce from YOU? Seth Bascom, I never heard such--"

She rose from her seat against the rail.

"Set down," ordered her husband sharply. "You set down and keep down."

She stared, gasped, and resumed her seat. Seth gazed straight ahead into
the blackness. He swallowed once or twice, and his hands tightened on
the spokes of the wheel.

"That--that feller there," nodding grimly toward the groaning figure at
the pumps, "told me himself that him and you had agreed to get a divorce
from me--to get it right off. He give me to understand that you expected
him, 'twas all settled and that was why he'd come to Eastboro. That's
what he told me this afternoon on the depot platform."

Mrs. Bascom again sprang up.

"Set down!" commanded Seth.

"I won't."

"Yes, you will. Set down." And she did.

"Seth," she cried, "did he--did Bennie tell you that? Did he?