struck the lintel over the widow's head, was shattered, and sent
down upon her a shower of villainously smelling sparks. Mrs. Mumpson
shrieked and sought frantically to keep her calico wrapper from taking
fire. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wiggins rose and took a step or two that she
might assist should there be any positive danger, for she had not yet
reached a point of malignity which would lead her to witness calmly an
auto-da-fe. This was Jane's opportunity. Mrs. Wiggins had alienated
this small and hitherto friendly power, and now, with a returning
impulse of loyalty, it took sides with the weaker party. The kitchen
door was on a crack; the child pushed it noiselessly open, darted
around behind the stove, and withdrew the rocking chair.

Mrs. Wiggins' brief anxiety and preoccupation passed, and she stepped
backward again to sit down. She did sit down, but with such terrific
force that the stove and nearly everything else in the room threatened
to fall with her. She sat helplessly for a bewildered moment, while
Jane, with the chair, danced before her exclaiming, tauntingly, "That's
for chasing me out as if I was a cat!"

"Noo hi'll chase ye both hout," cried the ireful Wiggins, scrambling to
her feet. She made good her threat, for Holcroft, a moment later, saw
mother and daughter, the latter carrying the chair, rushing from the
front door, and Mrs. Wiggins, armed with a great wooden spoon, waddling
after them, her objurgations mingling with Mrs. Mumpson's shrieks and
Jane's shrill laughter. The widow caught a glimpse of him standing in
the barn door, and, as if borne by the wind, she flew toward him,
crying, "He shall be my protector!"

He barely had time to whisk through a side door and close it after him.
The widow's impetuous desire to pant out the story of her wrongs
carried her into the midst of the barnyard, where she was speedily
confronted by an unruly young heifer that could scarcely be blamed for
hostility to such a wild-looking object.

The animal shook its head threateningly as it advanced. Again the
widow's shrieks resounded. This time Holcroft was about to come to the
rescue, when the beleaguered woman made a dash for the top of the
nearest fence, reminding her amused looker-on of the night of her
arrival when she had perched like some strange sort of bird on the
wagon wheel.

Seeing that she was abundantly able to escape alone, the farmer
remained in concealment. Although disgusted and angry at the