"There’s not a bit of truth in that," said the weaker woman, in feeble self-defence. She would have said some of the things she was always saying to others but for fear that, driven further, the strong woman might actually resort to violence. No, there was nothing for Jane Hemingway to do but to listen. "Oh, I don’t care what you deny," Ann hurled at her. "I know what I’m talking about." Then Ann’s rage led her to say something which, in calmer mood, she would, for reasons of her own, not have even hinted at. "Look here, Jane," she went on, bending down and touching the shrinking shoulder of her enemy, "in all your life you never heard me accused of making false predictions. When I say a thing, folks know that I know what I’m talking about and look for it to happen. So now I say, positively, that I’m going to get even with you. Hell and all its inmates have been at your back for a score of years, but God—Providence, the law of nature, or whatever it is that rights wrong—is bound to prevail, and you are going to face a misfortune—a certain sort of misfortune—that I know all about. I reckon I’m making a fool of myself in preparing you for it, but I’m so glad it’s coming that I’ve got to tell it to somebody. When the grim time comes I want you to remember that you brought it on yourself." Ann ceased speaking and stood all of a quiver before the crouching creature. Jane Hemingway’s blood, at best sluggish of action, turned cold. With her face hidden by her bonnet, she sat staring at the ground. All her remaining strength seemed to have left her. She well knew what Ann meant. The peddler had told her secret—had even revealed more of the truth than he had to her. Discovering that Ann hated her, he had gone into grim and minute particulars over her affliction. He had told Ann the cancer was fatal, that the quack lotion he had sold would only keep the patient from using a better remedy or resorting to the surgeon’s knife. In any case, her fate was sealed, else Ann would not be so positive about it. "I see I hit you all right that pop, madam!" Ann chuckled. "Well, you will wait the day in fear and trembling that is to be my sunrise of joy. Now, pick up your duds and go home. I want you out of my sight." Like a subject under hypnotic suggestion, Jane Hemingway, afraid of Ann, and yet more afraid of impending fate, rose to her feet. Ann had turned back to her tub and bent over it. Jane felt a feeble impulse to make some defiant retort, but could not rouse her bound tongue to action. In her helplessness and fear she hated her enemy more than ever before, but could find no adequate way of showing it. The sun had risen higher and its rays beat fiercely down on her thin back, as she managed to shoulder her bundle and move homeward. XII