"Never you mind about that," Jane said. "You remember what I said and don’t meddle with what doesn’t concern you." "Well, she kin bet I won’t," Sam mused, as he stood looking after her, as she disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen. "This is one of the times, I reckon, that I’ll take her advice. Some’n’ big has taken place, or is about to take place, if I’m any judge." Jane sank into a chair in the kitchen and softly groaned as she cast her slow eyes about her. Here all seemed sheer mockery. Every mute object in the room uttered a cry against her. The big, open fireplace, with its pots and kettles, the cupboard, the cleanly polished table, with the row of hot pies Sam had rescued from the coals and placed there to cool, the churn, the milk and butter-jars and pans, the pepper-pods hanging to the smoked rafters overhead—all these things, which had to do with mere subsistence, seemed suddenly out of place among the things which really counted. Suddenly Jane had a faint thrill of hope, as a thought, like a stray gleam of light penetrating a dark chamber, came to her. Perhaps, when Virginia was told that Ann Boyd had only used her as a tool in a gigantic and subtle scheme of revenge against her own flesh and blood, the girl would turn back to her own. Perhaps, but it was not likely. Ann Boyd had never failed in any deliberate undertaking. She would not now, and, for aught Jane knew to the contrary, Virginia might be as confirmed already in her enmity as the older woman, and had long been a dutiful and observant spy. It was horrible, but—yes, Jane was willing to admit that it was fair. The worm had turned, and its sting was equal to the concentrated pain of all Ann Boyd’s years of isolated sufferings. XXXV In about half an hour Virginia returned home. She passed Sam under the apple-tree, where he now had a big pot full of shelled corn and lye over an incipient fire preparing to make whole-grained hominy, and hastened into the kitchen, where Jane sat bowed before the fire. "Is there anything I can do, mother?" she inquired. There was a pause. Mrs. Hemingway did not look up. In some surprise, Virginia repeated her question, and then Jane said, calmly and deliberately: "Yes; there is something you can do. You can get out of my sight, and _keep_ out of it. When I want anything from you, I’ll call on you." Virginia paused, dumfounded, and then passed out into the yard and approached her uncle. "Can you tell me," she asked, "if anything has gone wrong with mother?" Sam gave her one swift glance from beneath his tattered, tent-shaped wool-hat, and then, with his paddle, he began to stir the corn and lye in the pot.