pectation than dread. The wages of sin are the hardest debts
on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and
unexpected places. Mrs. Comstock's face and hair were so white, that her
dark eyes seemed burned into their setting. Silently she stared at the
woman before her a long time.

"I might have saved myself the trouble of coming," she said at last, "I
see you are guilty as sin!"

"What has Mag Sinton been telling you?" panted the miserable woman,
gripping the fence.

"The truth!" answered Mrs. Comstock succinctly. "Guilt is in every line
of your face, in your eyes, all over your wretched body. If I'd taken a
good look at you any time in all these past years, no doubt I could have
seen it just as plain as I can now. No woman or man can do what you've
done, and not get a mark set on them for every one to read."

"Mercy!" gasped weak little Elvira Carney. "Have mercy!"

"Mercy?" scoffed Mrs. Comstock. "Mercy! That's a nice word from you! How
much mercy did you have on me? Where's the mercy that sent Comstock to
the slime of the bottomless quagmire, and left me to see it, and then
struggle on in agony all these years? How about the mercy of letting me
neglect my baby all the days of her life? Mercy! Do you really dare use
the word to me?"

"If you knew what I've suffered!"

"Suffered?" jeered Mrs. Comstock. "That's interesting. And pray, what
have you suffered?"

"All the neighbours have suspected and been down on me. I ain't had a
friend. I've always felt guilty of his death! I've seen him go down a
thousand times, plain as ever you did. Many's the night I've stood on
the other bank of that pool and listened to you, and I tried to throw
myself in to keep from hearing you, but I didn't dare. I knew God would
send me to burn forever, but I'd better done it; for now, He has set the
burning on my body, and every hour it is slowly eating the life out of
me. The doctor says it's a cancer----"

Mrs. Comstock exhaled a long breath. Her grip on the hoe relaxed and her
stature lifted to towering height.

"I didn't know, or care, when I came here, just what I did," she said.
"But my way is beginning to clear. If the guilt of your soul has come
to a head, in a cancer on your body, it looks as if the Almighty didn't
need any of my help in meting out His punishments. I really couldn't fix
up anything to come anywhere near that. If you are going to burn until
your life goes out with that sort of fir