"What did you do?"

"Oh, don't ask me--don't ask me!" Martha Jane's eyes were filling, her
lips twitching. "Oh, Joel, it was awful--simply awful! I'm glad you did
not try to tell her. She stood tottering pitifully and looking as white
as a dead person. I thought she was going to faint, and would have
called her mother if she hadn't stopped me. It seemed to take away all
the hope she had left. She sees it exactly as Mr. Cavanaugh does--that
her husband intends to disappear for good and all. She thinks it was for
her sake, too. She said so. She declared she did not blame him at all,
and when I told her about that child she said she understood that, too,
and knew he did it for the little girl's good--that the child was facing
a terrible future."

"Well, well, is that all?" Joel inquired, huskily.

"I left her seated at a window," Martha Jane continued. "I tried to get
her to promise to be calm and hopeful, but all the old strength and
energy seemed to have left her. I'm afraid, very much afraid, that she
will never get over it. She has borne a lot already and this shock is
the last straw."

A strap which held the breeching around the buttocks of the horse and
fastened it to the shafts had broken, and Joel got down to fix it. The
buckle-hole had torn out of the rotten leather, and he had to punch
another with his pocket-knife.

"Poor Joel!" Martha Jane thought, as she sat and watched him. "People
needn't tell me that men can't be constant. He'd love Tilly if she were
to wipe her feet on him. He'd love her if she refused him a dozen times
for other men. He'd go any length right now to give her back her
husband. I wonder what there is about her that men care so much for. I'm
sure I don't know, unless it is because she is so patient and gentle and
plucky."

The harness was fixed. Joel got back into the buggy and drove on to the
Square. "I was going to stop and get some things," Martha Jane said,
"but I won't. I'm coming in to see Tilly to-morrow. I'm about the only
one that goes to see her now. You knew, didn't you, that some of these
narrow-minded women and girls are pretending to believe simply awful
things about her?"

"What sort of things?" Eperson asked, waxing indignant.

"Why, you know--they say that Mr. Trott took her to his mother's house
and introduced her to the worst sort of folks. There isn't a word of
truth in it. Tilly has not yet even met the woman. Tilly and he had a
cottage all to themselves. She to