said Margaret. "You'll not touch me.
You'll stand there and hear the truth at last, and because I dare face
you and tell it, you will know in your soul it is truth. When Robert
Comstock shaved that quagmire out there so close he went in, he wanted
to keep you from knowing where he was coming from. He'd been to see
Elvira Carney. They had plans to go to a dance that night----"

"Close your lips!" said Mrs. Comstock in a voice of deadly quiet.

"You know I wouldn't dare open them if I wasn't telling you the truth.
I can prove what I say. I was coming from Reeds. It was hot in the woods
and I stopped at Carney's as I passed for a drink. Elvira's bedridden
old mother heard me, and she was so crazy for some one to talk with, I
stepped in a minute. I saw Robert come down the path. Elvira saw him,
too, so she ran out of the house to head him off. It looked funny, and
I just deliberately moved where I could see and hear. He brought her his
violin, and told her to get ready and meet him in the woods with it that
night, and they would go to a dance. She took it and hid it in the loft
to the well-house and promised she'd go."

"Are you done?" demanded Mrs. Comstock.

"No. I am going to tell you the whole story. You don't spare Elnora
anything. I shan't spare you. I hadn't been here that day, but I can
tell you just how he was dressed, which way he went and every word they
said, though they thought I was busy with her mother and wouldn't notice
them. Put down your hoe, Kate. I went to Elvira, told her what I knew
and made her give me Comstock's violin for Elnora over three years ago.
She's been playing it ever since. I won't see her slighted and abused
another day on account of a man who would have broken your heart if he
had lived. Six months more would have showed you what everybody else
knew. He was one of those men who couldn't trust himself, and so no
woman was safe with him. Now, will you drop grieving over him, and do
Elnora justice?"

Mrs. Comstock grasped the hoe tighter and turning she went down the
walk, and started across the woods to the home of Elvira Carney. With
averted head she passed the pool, steadily pursuing her way. Elvira
Carney, hanging towels across the back fence, saw her coming and went
toward the gate to meet her. Twenty years she had dreaded that visit.
Since Margaret Sinton had compelled her to produce the violin she had
hidden so long, because she was afraid to destroy it, she had come
closer ex