ble. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half
messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of
sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun--and not finished.

After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing
herself:

"Wonder how they're finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little
more red up up there. You know,"--she paused, and feeling gathered,--"it
seems kind of _sneaking_: locking her up in town and coming out here to
get her own house to turn against her!"

"But, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife, "the law is the law."

"I s'pose 'tis," answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much
to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up
she said aggressively:

"The law is the law--and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to
cook on this?"--pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened
the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she
was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year
after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie
Foster trying to bake in that oven--and the thought of her never going
over to see Minnie Foster--.

She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: "A person gets
discouraged--and loses heart."

The sheriff's wife had looked from the stove to the sink--to the pail of
water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there
silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for
evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of
seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in
the eyes of the sheriff's wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it
was gently:

"Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We'll not feel them when we
go out."

Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she
was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, "Why, she was piecing a
quilt," and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks out on the table.

"It's log-cabin pattern," she said, putting several of them together.
"Pretty, isn't it?"

They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps
on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

"Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?"

The s