"Joe—she went to Joe!" Ann gasped, finding her voice. "Now, I reckon, he believes me. And to think that Jane Hemingway would say all that—do all that! It don’t seem reasonable. But you say she actually—" "Of course she did," broke in the narrator. "And when she was through she marched straight down the middle aisle and stalked outside. Half the folks got up and went to the windows and watched her tottering along the road; and then Brother Bazemore called ’em back and made ’em sit down. He said, in his cold-blooded way, hemming and hawing, that the whole community had been too severe, and that the best way to get the thing settled and smooth-running again was to agree on some sort of public testimonial. Ann, I reckon fully ten men yelled out that they would second the motion. I never in all my life saw such excitement. Folks was actually crying, and this one and that one was telling kind things you had done to them. Then they all got around me, Ann, and they made a lots over me, saying I was the only one who had acted right, and that I must ask you to forgive them. That was the motion Bazemore put and carried by a vote of rising. Half of them was so anxious to have their votes counted that they climbed up on the benches and waved their hats and bonnets and shawls, and yelled out, ’Here! here!’ Bazemore dismissed without preaching; it looked like he thought nothing he could say, in any regular line, would count in such a tumult. And after meeting dozens of ’em slid up to me and snatched my hands and told me to speak a good word for them; they kept it up even after I’d got outside, some of ’em walking part of the way with me and sending messages. Wait till I catch my breath, and I’ll tell you who spoke and what each one said, as well as I can." "Never mind," said Ann, an absent look in her strong face. "I believe I’d rather not hear any more of it; it don’t make one bit of difference one way or another." "Why, Ann, surely you won’t entertain hard feelings, now that they all feel so bad. If you could only ’a’ been there, you would—"