of the
congregation, which had expected the return of its dimes and quarters,
no doubt, in the shape of a new altar, or perhaps an organ.

"Not a cent to keep up the mausoleum or anything," Mrs. Graves confided
to me. "And nothing to the church. All to that telephone-girl, who comes
from no one knows where! It's enough to make her father turn over in his
grave. It has set people talking, I can tell you."

Maggie's mental state during the days preceding the funeral was curious.
She coupled the most meticulous care as to the preparations for the
ceremony, and a sort of loving gentleness when she decked Miss Emily's
small old frame for its last rites, with suspicion and hatred of Miss
Emily living. And this suspicion she held also against Anne Bullard.

Yet she did not want to leave the house. I do not know just what she
expected to find. We were cleaning up preparatory to going back to the
city, and I felt that at least a part of Maggie's enthusiasm for corners
was due to a hope of locating more concealed papers. She was rather
less than polite to the Bullard girl, who was staying on at my
invitation--because the village was now flagrantly unfriendly and
suspicious of her. And for some strange reason, the fact that Miss
Emily's cat followed Anne everywhere convinced Maggie that her
suspicions were justified.

"It's like this, Miss Agnes," she said one morning, leaning on the
handle of a floor brush. "She had some power over the old lady, and
that's how she got the property. And I am saying nothing, but she's
no Christian, that girl. To see her and that cat going out night after
night, both snooping along on their tiptoes--it ain't normal."

I had several visits from Martin Sprague since Miss Emily's death, and
after a time I realized that he was interested in Anne. She was quite
attractive in her mourning clothes, and there was something about her,
not in feature, but in neatness and in the way her things had of, well,
staying in place, that reminded me of Miss Emily herself. It was rather
surprising, too, to see the way she fitted into her new surroundings and
circumstances.

But I did not approve of Martin's attraction to her. She had volunteered
no information about herself, she apparently had no people. She was
a lady, I felt, although, with the exception of her new mourning, her
clothing was shabby and her linen even coarse.

She held the key to the confession. I knew that. And I had no more hope
of getting