more than I would the black plague. I am
going back to my girl."

Mrs. Comstock turned and started swiftly through the woods, but she had
gone only a few rods when she stopped, and leaning on the hoe, she stood
thinking deeply. Then she turned back. Elvira still clung to the fence,
sobbing bitterly.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Comstock, "but I left a wrong impression with
you. I don't want you to think that I believe the Almighty set a cancer
to burning you as a punishment for your sins. I don't! I think a lot
more of the Almighty. With a whole sky-full of worlds on His hands to
manage, I'm not believing that He has time to look down on ours, and
pick you out of all the millions of us sinners, and set a special kind
of torture to eating you. It wouldn't be a gentlemanly thing to do, and
first of all, the Almighty is bound to be a gentleman. I think likely
a bruise and bad blood is what caused your trouble. Anyway, I've got
to tell you that the cleanest housekeeper I ever knew, and one of the
noblest Christian women, was slowly eaten up by a cancer. She got hers
from the careless work of a poor doctor. The Almighty is to forgive sin
and heal disease, not to invent and spread it."

She had gone only a few steps when she again turned back.

"If you will gather a lot of red clover bloom, make a tea strong as lye
of it, and drink quarts, I think likely it will help you, if you are
not too far gone. Anyway, it will cool your blood and make the burning
easier to bear."

Then she swiftly went home. Enter the lonely cabin she could not,
neither could she sit outside and think. She attacked a bed of beets and
hoed until the perspiration ran from her face and body, then she began
on the potatoes. When she was too tired to take another stroke she
bathed and put on dry clothing. In securing her dress she noticed her
husband's carefully preserved clothing lining one wall. She gathered it
in an armload and carried it to the swamp. Piece by piece she pitched
into the green maw of the quagmire all those articles she had dusted
carefully and fought moths from for years, and stood watching as it
slowly sucked them down. She went back to her room and gathered every
scrap that had in any way belonged to Robert Comstock, excepting his gun
and revolver, and threw it into the swamp. Then for the first time she
set her door wide open.

She was too weary now to do more, but an urging unrest drove her. She
wanted Elnora. It seemed to her s