e of the women, backing away as she
spoke.

"Oh, Eva, don't; don't do so," pleaded Fanny, tremulously.

"I be," said Eva, and she cut recklessly up the front breadth.

"You ain't cutting it right," said the other neighbor, who was
skilful in such matters, and never fully moved from her own
household grooves by any excitement. "If you are a-goin' to cut it
at all, you had better cut it right."

"I don't care how I cut it," returned Eva, thrusting the woman away.
"Oh, I don't care how I cut it; I want to waste it. I will waste
it."

The other neighbor backed entirely out of the room, then turned and
fled across the yard, her calico wrapper blowing wildly and lashing
about her slender legs, to her own house, the doors of which she
locked. Presently the other woman followed her, stepping with the
ponderous leisure which results from vastness of body and philosophy
of mind. The autumn wind, swirling in impetuous gusts, had little
effect upon her broadside of woollen shawl. She had not come out on
that raw evening with nothing upon her head. She shook the kitchen
door of her friend, and smiled with calm reassurance when it was
cautiously set ajar to disclose a wide-eyed and open-mouthed face of
terror. "Who is it?"

"It's me. What have you got your door locked for?"

"I think that Eva Loud is raving crazy. I'm afraid of her."

"Lord! you 'ain't no reason to be 'fraid of her. She ain't crazy.
She's only lettin' the birds that fly over your an' my heads settle
down to roost. You and me, both of us, if we was situated jest as
she is, might think of doin' jest what she's a-doin', but we won't
neither of us do it. We'd let our best dresses hang in the closet,
safe and sound, while we cut them up in our souls; but Eva, she's
different."

"Well, I don't care. I believe she's crazy, and I'm going to keep my
doors locked. How do you know she hasn't killed Ellen and put her in
the well?"

"Stuff! Now you're lettin' your birds roost, Hattie Monroe."

"I read something that wasn't any worse than that in the paper the
other day. I should think they would look in the well. Have Mrs.
Jones and Miss Cross gone home?"

"No; they are over there. There's poor Andrew coming now; I wonder
if he has heard anything?"

Both women eyed hesitatingly poor Andrew Brewster's dejected figure
creeping up the road in the dark.

"You holler and ask him," said the woman in the door.

"I hate to, for I know by his looks he 'ain't heard any