"It’s coming, thank God, it’s coming as fast as a dog can trot!" she chuckled as she plodded along after her waddling cow. "Now, Jane Hemingway, you’ll have something else to bother about besides your blasted cancer—something that will cut your pride as deep as that does your selfish flesh. It won’t fail to come, either. Don’t I know the Chester method? Huh, if I don’t, it isn’t known. With his head bent that way, and holding her hand with hand and arm both at once, he might have been his father over again. Huh, I felt like tearing his eyes out, just now—the young beast! I felt like she was me, and the old brink was yawning again right at my feet. Huh, I felt that way about Jane Hemingway’s daughter—that’s the oddest thing of all! But she _is_ beautiful; she’s the prettiest thing I ever saw in all my life. No wonder he is after her; she’s the greatest prize for a Chester in Georgia. Jane’s asleep right now, but she’ll wake before long and she’ll wonder with all her wounded pride how God ever let her close her eyes. Yes, my revenge is on the way. I see the light its blaze has cast on ahead. It may be Old Nick’s torch—what do I care? He can wave it, wave it, wave it!" She increased her step till she overtook her cow. Laying her hand on the animal’s back, she gently patted it. "Go on home to your calf, you hussy," she laughed. "The young of even _your_ sort is safer, according to the plan that guides the world, than Jane Hemingway’s. She’s felt so safe, too, that she’s made it her prime object in life to devil a person for exactly what’s coming under her own roof—_exactly to a gnat’s heel_!" XIX One evening, about four days later, Mrs. Waycroft hurried in to see Ann. The sharp-sighted woman, as she nodded indifferently to the visitor, and continued her work of raking live coals under a three-legged pot on the hearth, saw that Mrs. Waycroft was the fluttering bearer of news of some sort, but she made no show of being ready to listen to it. The widow, however, had come to be heard, she had come for the sheer enjoyment of recital. "Ann," she panted, "let that oven alone and listen to me. I’ve got about the biggest piece of news that has come your way in many a long day." "You say you have?" Ann’s brass-handled poker rang as she gave a parting thrust at a burning chunk, and struck the leg of the pot.