"She is more wonderful than her narrow-minded enemies dream of," returned the store-keeper. "You see, it’s her pride that keeps her from showing her fine feelings, and it’s her secluded life that makes them misunderstand her. Well, she brought her wagon and took the boy away. That was another queer thing," Wilson added. "She evidently had started to take him to her house, for she drove as far as the gate and then stopped there to study a moment, and finally turned round and drove him to the poor cabin his folks lived in. You see, she was afraid that even that would cause talk, and it would. Old Jane Hemingway would have fed on that morsel for months, as unreasonable as it would have been. Ann sent a doctor, though, and every delicacy the market afforded, and the boy was soon out. It wasn’t long afterwards that Luke King went to college at Knoxville, and now he’s away in the West somewhere. His mother, after his father’s death, married a trifling fellow, Mark Bruce, and that brought on some dispute between her and her son, who had tried to keep her from marrying such a man. They say Luke told her if she did marry Bruce he’d go away and never even write home, and so far, they say, he has kept his word. Nobody knows where he is or what he’s doing unless it is Mrs. Boyd, and she never talks. I can’t keep from thinking he’s done well, though, for he had a big head on him and a lot of determination." "And this Mrs. Hemingway, her enemy," said the drummer, tentatively, "you say she was evidently the woman’s rival at one time. But it seems she married some one else." "Oh yes, she suddenly accepted Tom Hemingway, an old bachelor, who had been trying to marry her for a long time. Most people thought she did it to hide her feelings when Joe Boyd got married. She treated Tom like a dog, making him do everything she wanted, and he was daft about her till he died, just a couple of weeks after his child was born, who, by-the-way, has grown up to be the prettiest girl in all the country, and that’s another feature in the story," the store-keeper smiled. "You see, Mrs. Boyd looks upon old Jane as the prime cause of her losing her _own_ child, and I understand she hates the girl as much as she does her mother." A man had come into the store and stood leaning against a show-case on the side devoted to groceries. "There’s a customer," said the drummer; "don’t let me keep you, old man; you know you’ve got to look at my samples some time to-day." "Well, I’ll go see what he wants," said Wilson, "and then I’ll look through your line, though I don’t feel a bit like it, after losing the best regular customer I have." The drummer had opened his sample-case on the desk when Wilson came back. "You say the woman’s husband took the child away," remarked the drummer; "did he go far?"