"Oh!" The exclamation seemed wrung from her when off her guard, and Mrs. Boyd clutched the rail of the fence so tightly that her strong nails sunk into the soft wood. "He said _that_! He said that _about me_!" "Yes, and he ought to have been ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Waycroft; "and if he had been anything else than a preacher, surely some of the men there—men you have befriended—would not have set still and let it pass." "But they _did_ let it pass," said Mrs. Boyd, bitterly; "they did let it pass, one and all." "Oh yes, nobody would dare, in this section, to criticise a preacher," said the other. "What any little, spindle-legged parson says goes the same as the word of God out here in the backwoods. I’d have left the church myself, but I knowed you’d want to hear what was said; besides, they all know I’m your friend." "Yes, they all know you are the only white woman that ever comes near me. But what else did he say?" "Oh, he had lots to say. He said he hadn’t mentioned no names, but it was always the hit dog that yelped, and that you had made yourself a target by leaving as you did. He went on to say that, in his opinion, all that was proved at court against you away back there was just. He said some folks misunderstood Scripture when it come to deal with your sort and stripe. He said some argued that a church door ought always to be wide open to any sinner whatsoever, but that in your daily conduct of holding every coin so tight that the eagle on it squeals, and in giving nothing to send the Bible to the heathens, and being eternally at strife with your neighbors, you had showed, he said, that no good influence could be brought to bear on you, and that people who was really trying to live upright lives ought to shun you like they would a catching disease. He 'lowed you’d had the same Christian chance in your bringing-up, and a better education than most gals, and had deliberately throwed it all up and gone your headstrong way. In his opinion, it would be wrong to condone your past, and tell folks you stood an equal chance with the rising generation fetched up under the rod and Biblical injunction by parents who knowed what lasting scars the fires of sin could burn in a living soul. He said the community had treated you right, in sloughing away from you, ever since you was found out, because you had never showed a minute’s open repentance. You’d helt your head, he thought, if possible, higher than ever, and in not receiving the social sanction of your neighbors, it looked like you was determined to become the richest woman in the state for no other reason than to prove that wrong prospered." The speaker paused in her recital. The listener, her face set and dark with fury, glanced towards the cottage. "Come in," she said, huskily; "people might pass along and know what we are talking about, and, somehow, I don’t want to give them that satisfaction."