Joe Boyd’s embarrassment of a moment before returned. He twisted his hands together again. "Yes; it’s like this, Ann," he went on, awkwardly: "a short time back Lawson’s mother and father got onto the fact that you were in good circumstances, and it made the biggest change in them you ever heard of. They talked it all over the settlement. They are hard up, and they couldn’t talk of anything but how much you was worth, and what you had your money invested in, and the like. After they got onto that, they never—never paid no attention to what had been—been circulated—your money covered all that as completely as a ten-foot snow. Instead of turning up their noses, as Nettie was afraid they would do, it only made them brag about how well their boy had done, and what a fool I was. They tried all sorts of ways to get Nettie interested in some scheme to attract your attention, but Nettie would just cry and take on and refuse to come over here or to write to you." "I understand"—Ann stroked her compressed lips with an unsteady hand—"I understand. I’ve never been a natural mother to her; she couldn’t come to me like that. But you say they turned against you." "Yes. You see, the Lawsons got an idea—the old woman did, in particular, from something she’d picked up—that it was _me_ that stood between you and Nettie. They thought you and me had had such a serious falling-out that a proud woman like you never would have anything to do with Nettie as long as I was about, and that the best thing was to shove me off so the reconciliation would work faster. The truth is, they said that would please you." "I see, I see," Ann said. "And they set about putting you at the poor-farm." "Yes; they seemed to think that was as good a place as any. And they could get all the proof necessary to put me there, for I hadn’t a cent to my name nor a whole rag to my back; and, Ann, for the last three months I haven’t been able to do a lick o’ work. I’ve had a strange sort of hurting all down my left side, and my right ankle seems affected in the same way." Ann Boyd suddenly turned away. Through the window she had seen the wind blowing one of her sheets from the fence, and she went out and put it in place. He limped out into the sunlight and stood at the little, sagging gate a few yards from her. Something of his old dignity and gallantry of manner was on him: he still held his hat in his hand, his thin, iron-gray hair exposed to the warm rays of the sun.