Most reluctantly Virginia allowed Ann to press the money into her unwilling hand. "But remember this," Ann said, firmly: "Jane Hemingway must never know where you got it—never! Do you understand? It looks like I can stand most anything better than letting that woman know I put up money on this; besides, bad off as she is, she’d peg out before she’d let me help her." Virginia’s face was now aflame with joy. "I tell you what I’ll do," she said. "I’ll accept it as a loan, and I’ll pay it back some day if I have to work my hands to the bone." "Well, you can do as you like about that," Ann said. "The only thing I absolutely insist on is that she isn’t told who sent it. It wouldn’t be hard to keep her in the dark; if you’ll promise me right here, on your word, not to tell, then you can say you gave your sacred promise to that effect, and that would settle it." "Well, I’ll do that," Virginia finally agreed. "I know I can do that." "All right," Ann said. "It may set the old thing to guessing powerful, and she may bore you to tell, promise or no promise, but she’ll never suspicion _me_—never while the sun shines from the sky." "No, she won’t suspect you," Virginia admitted, and with a grateful, backward look she moved away. Ann stood leaning against the fence, her eyes on the receding figure as the girl moved along the sunlit road towards the dun cottage in the shadow of the mountain. "I reckon I’m a born idiot," she said; "but there wasn’t no other way out of it—no other under the sun. I got my foot in it when I laid in wait watching for the girl to walk into that trap. If I hadn’t been so eager for that, I could have left Jane Hemingway to her fate. Good Lord, if this goes on, I’ll soon be bowing and scraping at that old hag’s feet—_me!_ huh! when it’s been _her_ all this time that has been at the bottom of the devilment." XXV