o who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. I know
I don't feel revengeful. There wasn't enough _to_ Jim for me to
wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because
I used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream
when I once had seen it was a dream--Not a bit of it. There was a time,
though, when I first began to suspect and understand, that makes me
rather sick to think of even now. I was so far from home, you see. I
hadn't a friend, and I wouldn't for worlds have written back to my old
friends that I'd made a bad bargain--not while I wasn't dead sure. And I
kept on hoping.

"At first we had a real good time. We lived in a miner's cottage, but
that seemed sort of jolly. I'd been used to hard work all my life, so I
didn't mind that, and I wanted him to have as nice a home as any man
could on the same money. So I cleaned and contrived and baked and brewed
and fixed up. I wanted him to be pleased with me and proud among the
other men. But pretty soon I found I didn't care to make acquaintances,
because I was ashamed of the way Jim did. He kept putting all his money
into the mine, sending good money after bad, and let me keep house on
nothing, and then was in a worse and worse temper because the mine
didn't pan out and things weren't more comfortable at home. I began to
wake up in the night and lie there in a cold sweat, clean scairt. I
haven't told you that we were looking for an addition to the family.
That's one reason I was so scairt. But I shut my teeth, and said I to
myself, 'This baby's going to have a chance if his mother can give it to
him by not getting excited or letting things prey on her mind.' So I
kept a hold on myself and didn't let anything count except guarding that
baby. I seemed to care more about it than all the rest of the world put
together. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how much more than for all the
rest of the world put together. I don't know that a man would
understand."

"Yes, he would; of course he would," spoke Gerald, gently reverent, yet
a little impatient; then he qualified his assertion: "He could imagine,
I mean to say, how you would have felt that way."

"Well, that matter was going to be put safely through, no matter what.
The first mistake I made was not making friends with my women neighbors,
so that everybody in Elsinore supposed that Jim's wife was the same
stripe as he,--or that's what I thought they supposed,--and when I
needed fri