s wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He
was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff--a
heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the
law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between
criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale's
mind, with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all
of them was going to the Wrights' now as a sheriff.

"The country's not very pleasant this time of year," Mrs. Peters at last
ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.

Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little
hill and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her
feel like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It
had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and
the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were
looking at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney
was bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the
place as they drew up to it.

"I'm glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two
women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.

Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand on the knob,
Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold.
And the reason it seemed she couldn't cross it now was simply because
she hadn't crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her
mind, "I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster"--she still thought of
her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright.
And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go
from her mind. But _now_ she could come.

* * *

The men went over to the stove. The women stood close together by the
door. Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said,
"Come up to the fire, ladies."

Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. "I'm not--cold," she
said.

And so the two women stood by the door, at first not even so much as
looking around the kitchen.

The men talked for a minute about what a good thing it was the sheriff
had sent his deputy out that morning to make a fire for them, and then
Sheriff Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer coat,
and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a way that seemed to mark
the beginning of official