e stroke.

"Dick Moore came into her life that summer. His father, Abner Moore,
kept store at the Glen, but Dick had a sea-going streak in him from his
mother; he used to sail in summer and clerk in his father's store in
winter. He was a big, handsome fellow, with a little ugly soul. He
was always wanting something till he got it, and then he stopped
wanting it--just like a man. Oh, he didn't growl at the weather when
it was fine, and he was mostly real pleasant and agreeable when
everything went right. But he drank a good deal, and there were some
nasty stories told of him and a girl down at the fishing village. He
wasn't fit for Leslie to wipe her feet on, that's the long and short of
it. And he was a Methodist! But he was clean mad about her--because
of her good looks in the first place, and because she wouldn't have
anything to say to him in the second. He vowed he'd have her--and he
got her!"

"How did he bring it about?"

"Oh, it was an iniquitous thing! I'll never forgive Rose West. You
see, dearie, Abner Moore held the mortgage on the West farm, and the
interest was overdue some years, and Dick just went and told Mrs. West
that if Leslie wouldn't marry him he'd get his father to foreclose the
mortgage. Rose carried on terrible--fainted and wept, and pleaded with
Leslie not to let her be turned out of her home. She said it would
break her heart to leave the home she'd come to as a bride. I wouldn't
have blamed her for feeling dreadful bad over it--but you wouldn't have
thought she'd be so selfish as to sacrifice her own flesh and blood
because of it, would you? Well, she was.

"And Leslie gave in--she loved her mother so much she would have done
anything to save her pain. She married Dick Moore. None of us knew
why at the time. It wasn't till long afterward that I found out how
her mother had worried her into it. I was sure there was something
wrong, though, because I knew how she had snubbed him time and again,
and it wasn't like Leslie to turn face--about like that. Besides, I
knew that Dick Moore wasn't the kind of man Leslie could ever fancy, in
spite of his good looks and dashing ways. Of course, there was no
wedding, but Rose asked me to go and see them married. I went, but I
was sorry I did. I'd seen Leslie's face at her brother's funeral and
at her father's funeral--and now it seemed to me I was seeing it at her
own funeral. But Rose was smiling as a basket of chips, believe ME