o bed and dusk came. Mrs. Comstock gave up the
fire and set the supper on the table. Then she went out and sat on the
front-door step watching night creep around her. She started eagerly as
the gate creaked, but it was only Wesley Sinton coming.

"Katharine, Margaret and Elnora passed where I was working this
afternoon, and Margaret got out of the carriage and called me to the
fence. She told me what she had done. I've come to say to you that I am
sorry. She has heard me threaten to do it a good many times, but I never
would have got it done. I'd give a good deal if I could undo it, but I
can't, so I've come to tell you how sorry I am."

"You've got something to be sorry for," said Mrs. Comstock, "but likely
we ain't thinking of the same thing. It hurts me less to know the truth,
than to live in ignorance. If Mag had the sense of a pewee, she'd told
me long ago. That's what hurts me, to think that both of you knew Robert
was not worth an hour of honest grief, yet you'd let me mourn him all
these years and neglect Elnora while I did it. If I have anything to
forgive you, that is what it is."

Wesley removed his hat and sat on a bench.

"Katharine," he said solemnly, "nobody ever knows how to take you."

"Would it be asking too much to take me for having a few grains of plain
common sense?" she inquired. "You've known all this time that Comstock
got what he deserved, when he undertook to sneak in an unused way across
a swamp, with which he was none too familiar. Now I should have thought
that you'd figure that knowing the same thing would be the best method
to cure me of pining for him, and slighting my child."

"Heaven only knows we have thought of that, and talked of it often, but
we were both too big cowards. We didn't dare tell you."

"So you have gone on year after year, watching me show indifference to
Elnora, and yet a little horse-sense would have pointed out to you that
she was my salvation. Why look at it! Not married quite a year. All his
vows of love and fidelity made to me before the Almighty forgotten in a
few months, and a dance and a Light Woman so alluring he had to lie and
sneak for them. What kind of a prospect is that for a life? I know men
and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar;
both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than
that same old leopard can change its spots. After a man tells a woman
the first untruth of that sort, the others c