"That’s a fact," said Mrs. Waycroft; "they say I fetch you every bit of gossip, anyway. A few have quit speaking to me. Bazemore would himself, if he didn’t look to me once a month for my contribution. I hope what I’ve told you won’t upset you, Ann, but you always say you want to know what’s going on. It struck me that the whole congregation was about the most heartless body of human beings I ever saw packed together in one bunch." "I want you to tell me one other thing," said Mrs. Boyd, tensely, as they were entering the front doorway of the cottage—"was Jane Hemingway there?" "Oh yes, by a large majority. I forgot to tell you about her. I had my eyes on her, too, for I knowed it would tickle her nigh to death, and it did. When you left she actually giggled out loud and turned back an’ whispered to the Mayfield girls. Her old, yellow face fairly shone, she was that glad, and when Bazemore went on talking about you and burning that bench, she fairly doubled up, with her handkerchief clapped over her mouth." Mrs. Boyd drew a stiff-backed chair from beneath the dining-table and pushed it towards her guest. "There is not in hell itself, Mary Waycroft, a hatred stronger than I feel right now for that woman. She is a fiend in human shape. That miserable creature has hounded me every minute since we were girls together. As God is my judge, I believe I could kill her and not suffer remorse. There was a time when my disposition was as sweet and gentle as any girl’s, but she changed it. She has made me what I am. She is responsible for it all. I might have gone on—after my—my misfortune, and lived in some sort of harmony with my kind if it hadn’t been for her." "I know that," said the other woman, as she sat down and folded her cloth bonnet in her thin hands. "I really believe you’d have been a different woman, as you say, after—after your trouble if she had let you alone." Mrs. Boyd seated herself in another chair near the open door, and looked out at a flock of chickens and ducks which had gathered at the step and were noisily clamoring for food. "I saw two things that made my blood boil as I was leaving the church," said she. "I saw Abe Longley, who has been using my pasture for his cattle free of charge for the last ten years. I caught sight of his face, and it made me mad to think he’d sit there and never say a word in defence of the woman he’d been using all that time; and then I saw George Wilson, just as indifferent, near the door, when I’ve been favoring him and his shabby store with all my trade when I could have done better by going on to Darley. I reckon neither of those two men said the slightest thing when Bazemore advised the—the burning of the bench I’d sat on." "Oh no, of course not!" said Mrs. Waycroft, "nobody said a word. They wouldn’t have dared, Ann."