er home to-night, an' keep her till William gets a place fixed to
put her in." Mrs. Sloane turned to the minister and his wife,
regarding them with a mixture of defiance, sarcasm, and appeal.

They looked at each other hesitatingly. The minister's wife paled
within her hood, and her eyes reddened with tears.

"I shouldn't s'pose you'd need any time to think on it, such good
folks as you be," said Mrs. Sloane. "There ain't no other way. She's
got to be where there's a woman."

Mrs. Barnes turned her head towards her husband. "She can come, if
you think she ought to," she said, in a trembling voice.

The sun was setting when the party started. William led Rebecca out
through the kitchen--a muffled, hesitating figure, whose very
identity seemed to be lost, for she wore Mrs. Sloane's blue plaid
shawl pinned closely over her head and face--and lifted her into his
cutter with the minister and his wife. Then he and Barney walked
along, plodding through the deep snow behind the cutter. The sun was
setting, and it was bitterly cold; the snow creaked and the trees
swung with a stiff rattle of bare limbs in the wind.

The two men never spoke to each other. The minister drove slowly, and
they could always see Mrs. Jim Sloane's blue plaid shawl ahead.

When they reached the Caleb Thayer house, Barney stopped and William
followed on alone after the sleigh.

Barney turned into the yard, and his father was standing in the barn
door, looking out.

"Tell mother she's married," Barney sang out, hoarsely. Then he went
back to the road, and home to his own house.

Chapter XI

Barney went to see Rebecca the next day, but the minister's wife came
to the door and would not admit him. She puckered her lips painfully,
and a blush shot over her face and little thin throat as she stood
there before him. "I guess you had better not come in," said she,
nervously. "I guess you had better wait until Mrs. Berry gets settled
in her house. Mr. Berry is going to hire the old Bennett place. I
guess it would be pleasanter."

Barney turned away, blushing also as he stammered an assent. Always
keenly alive to the shame of the matter, it seemed as if his sense of
it were for the moment intensified. The minister's wife's whole
nature seemed turned into a broadside of mirrors towards Rebecca's
shame and misery, and it was as if the reflection was multiplied in
Barney as he looked at her.

Still, he could not take the shame to his own nature