and help she needed.

"She grabbed hold o' my hand, and says she:

"'Do you reckon I've got a right to forgive myself?' Says she, 'I know
I'm not a mean woman by nature, but Harvey's ways wasn't my ways. He
made me do things I didn't want to do and say things I didn't want to
say, and I never was myself as long as I lived with him. But God knows
I wouldn't 'a' been so hard on him if I'd only known,' says she. 'God
may forgive me, but even if He does, it don't seem to me that I've got
a right to forgive myself.'

"And says I, 'Mary, if you don't forgive yourself you won't be able to
keer for the children, and you haven't got any right to wrong the
livin' by worryin' over the dead. And now,' says I, 'you lie down on
this bed and shut your eyes and say to yourself, "Harvey's forgiven
me, and God's forgiven me, and I forgive myself." Don't let another
thought come into your head. Jest say it over and over till you go to
sleep, and while you're sleepin', I'll look after the children.'

"I didn't have much faith in my own remedy, but she minded me like a
child mindin' its mother; and, sure enough, when I tiptoed up-stairs
an hour or so after that, I found her fast asleep. Her mother and her
sister Sally come while she was still sleepin', and I left for home,
feelin' that she was in good hands.

"That night about half-past nine o'clock I went outdoors and set down
on the porch steps in the dark, as I always do jest before bedtime.
That's been one o' my ways ever since I was a child. Abram used to say
he had known me to forgit my prayers many a night, but he never knew
me to forgit to go outdoors and look up at the sky. If there was a
moon, or if the stars was shinin', I'd stay out and wander around in
the gyarden till he'd come out after me; and if it was cloudy, I'd set
there and feel safe in the darkness as in the light. I always have
thought, honey, that we lose a heap by sleepin' all night. Well, I was
sittin' there lookin' up at the stars, and all at once I saw a bright
light over in the direction of Harvey Andrews' place. Our house was
built on risin' ground, and we could see for a good ways around the
country. I called Abram and asked him if he hadn't better saddle old
Moll and ride over and see if he couldn't help whoever was in trouble.
But he said it was most likely some o' the neighbors burnin' brush,
and whatever it was it would be out before he could git to it. So we
set there watchin' it and speculatin' abo