osite corner, her bunched skirts held high, stood Miss Lois
Daggett.

"Please wait a minute, Mr. Elliot," she called. "I'll walk right
along under your umbrella, if you don't mind."

Wesley Elliot bowed and crossed the street. "Certainly," he said.

"I don't know why I didn't bring my own umbrella this morning," said
Miss Daggett with a keen glance at Elliot. "That old man stopped in
the library awhile ago, and he rather frightened me. He looked very
odd and talked so queer. Did he come to the parsonage?"

"Yes," said Wesley Elliot. "He came to the parsonage?"

"Did he tell you who he was?"

He had expected this question. But how should he answer it?

"He told me he had been ill for a long time," said the minister
evasively.

"Ill!" repeated Miss Daggett shrilly. Then she said one word:
"Insane."

"People who are insane are not likely to mention it," said Elliot.

"Then he is insane," said Miss Daggett with conviction.

Wesley looked at her meditatively. Would the truth, the whole truth,
openly proclaimed, be advisable at this juncture, he wondered. Lydia
could not hope to keep her secret long. And there was danger in her
attempt. He shuddered as he remembered the man's terrible words,
"Twice I have been tempted to knock her down when she stood between
me and the door." Would it not be better to abandon this pretense
sooner, rather than later? If the village knew the truth, would not
the people show at least a semblance of kindness to the man who had
expiated so bitterly the wrong he had done them?

"If the man is insane," Miss Daggett said, "it doesn't seem right to
me to have him at large."

"I wish I knew what to do," said Elliot.

"I think you ought to tell what you know if the man is insane."

"Well, I will tell," said Elliot, almost fiercely. "That man is
Andrew Bolton. He has come home after eighteen years of imprisonment,
which have left him terribly weak in mind and body. Don't you think
people will forgive him now?"

A swift vindictiveness flashed into the woman's face. "I don't know,"
said she.

"Why in the world don't you know, Miss Daggett?"

Then the true reason for the woman's rancor was disclosed. It was a
reason as old as the human race, a suspicion as old as the human
race, which she voiced. "I have said from the first," she declared,
"that nobody would come here, as that girl did, and do so much unless
she had a motive."

Elliot stared at her. "Then you hate that poor child f