a woman is the second wife?"

The woman glanced at her husband's warning face. She continued to gaze
at him while she replied in a choking voice to Rebecca:

"I--guess she's a nice woman," she replied. "I--don't know, I--guess
so. I--don't see much of her."

"I felt kind of hurt that John married again so quick," said Rebecca;
"but I suppose he wanted his house kept, and Agnes wanted care. I
wasn't so situated that I could take her when her mother died. I had
my own mother to care for, and I was school-teaching. Now mother has
gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me quite a little
property, and I've given up my school, and I've come for Agnes. I
guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose her stepmother is
a good woman, and has always done for her."

The man's warning shake at his wife was fairly portentous.

"I guess so," said she.

"John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman," said Rebecca.

Then the ferry-boat grated on the shore.

John Dent's widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her sister-in-law.
When the woman and her husband went down the road, on which Rebecca in
the wagon with her trunk soon passed them, she said reproachfully:

"Seems as if I'd ought to have told her, Thomas."

"Let her find it out herself," replied the man. "Don't you go to
burnin' your fingers in other folks' puddin', Maria."

"Do you s'pose she'll see anything?" asked the woman with a spasmodic
shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.

"See!" returned her husband with stolid scorn. "Better be sure there's
anything to see."

"Oh, Thomas, they say--"

"Lord, ain't you found out that what they say is mostly lies?"

"But if it should be true, and she's a nervous woman, she might be
scared enough to lose her wits," said his wife, staring uneasily after
Rebecca's erect figure in the wagon disappearing over the crest of the
hilly road.

"Wits that so easy upset ain't worth much," declared the man. "You
keep out of it, Maria."

Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a flaxen-headed
boy, who looked, to her understanding, not very bright. She asked him
a question, and he paid no attention. She repeated it, and he
responded with a bewildered and incoherent grunt. Then she let him
alone, after making sure that he knew how to drive straight.

They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and
gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden Wh