ebecca and William out here," said she, untying her hat, "and
I thought they acted real queer." Sarah cast a glance at the bedroom
door, which was ajar, and motioned Charlotte to close it. Charlotte
tiptoed across the room and shut the door softly, lest she should
awaken her father; then her mother beckoned her to come close, and
whispered something in her ear.

Charlotte started, and a great blush flamed out all over her face and
neck. She looked at her mother with angry shame. "I don't believe a
word of it," said she; "not a word of it."

"I walked home from meetin' with Mrs. Allen this evenin'," said her
mother, "an' she says it's all over town. She says Rebecca's been
stealin' out, an' goin' to walk with him unbeknownst to her mother
all summer. You know her mother wouldn't let him come to the house."

"I don't believe one word of it," repeated Charlotte.

"Mis' Allen says it's so," said Sarah. "She says Mis' Thayer has had
to stay home from evenin' meetin' on account of Ephraim--she don't
like to leave him alone, he ain't been quite so well lately--an'
Rebecca has made believe go to meetin' when she's been off with
William. Mis' Thayer went to meetin' to-night."

"Wasn't Mr. Thayer there?"

"Yes, he was there, but he wouldn't know what was goin' on. 'Tain't
very hard to pull the wool over Caleb Thayer's eyes."

"I don't believe one word of it," Charlotte said, again. When she
went up-stairs to bed that whisper of her mother's seemed to sound
through and above all her own trouble. It was to her like a note of
despair and shame, quite outside her own gamut of life. She could not
believe that she heard it at all. Rebecca's face as she had always
known her came up before her. "I don't believe one word of it," she
said again to herself.

But that whisper which had shocked her ear had already begun to be
repeated all over the village--by furtive matrons, behind their
hands, when the children had been sent out of the room; by girls,
blushing beneath each other's eyes as they whispered; by the lounging
men in the village store; it was sent like an evil strain through the
consciousness of the village, until everybody except Rebecca's own
family had heard it.

Barnabas saw little of other people, and nobody dared repeat the
whisper to him, and they had too much mercy or too little courage to
repeat it to Caleb or Deborah. Indeed, it is doubtful if any woman in
the village, even Hannah Berry, would have ventured to