"Stop!" Ann cried, peremptorily, "I don’t want any shirking. I want to hear actually every word she said. This thing may never come up between you and me again while the sun shines, and I want the truth. You are not toting fair. I want the facts—_every word the girl said_, every look, every bat of the eye, every sneer. I’m prepared. You talk plain—_plain_, I tell you!" "I see I’ll _have_ to," sighed Mrs. Waycroft, her eyes averted from the awful stare in Ann’s eyes. "The truth is, Ann, Nettie’s been thinking all her life, till just about a month ago, that you were—dead. Joe Boyd told her you was dead and buried, and got all the neighbors to keep the truth from her. It leaked out when she got engaged to young Lawson; his folks, Ann, they are as hide-bound and narrow as the worst hard-shell Baptists here—his folks raised objections and tried to break it off." "On account of me?" said Ann, under her breath. "Well, they tried to break it off," evaded Mrs. Waycroft, "and, in all the trouble over it, Nettie found out the facts—Joe finally told her. They say, Ann, that it brought her down to a sick-bed. She’s a queer sort of selfish girl, that had always held her head too high, and the discovery went hard with her. Then, Ann, the meanest thing that was ever done by a human being took place. Jane Hemingway was over there visiting a preacher’s wife she used to know, and she set in circulation the blackest lie that was ever afloat. Ann, she told over there that all your means—all the land and money you have made by hard toil, big brain, and saving—come to you underhand." "Underhand?" Ann exclaimed. "What did she mean by that, pray? What could the old she-cat mean by—" Mrs. Waycroft drew her sun-bonnet down over her eyes. She took a deep breath. "Ann, she’s a _terrible_ woman. I used to think maybe you went too far in hating her so much, but I don’t blame you now one bit. On the way over the mountain, I looked all the circumstances over, and actually made up my mind that you’d almost be justified in killing her, law or no law. Ann, she circulated a report over there that all you own in the world was given to you by Colonel Chester." "Ugh! Oh, my God!" Ann groaned like a strong man in sudden pain; and then, with her face hidden by her poke-bonnet, she trudged heavily along by her companion in total silence.