Her thin voice died away and there was silence. Patience sat staring at the coals with the dullness of despair on her face. Mrs. Willis’s spare frame had suddenly taken on an old, pathetic stoop. What her haughty soul had suffered during that recital, for which she had been so totally unprepared, Patience would never realize. The world seemed to be slipping from under the old woman’s trembling feet. She had been so strong in her condemnation of sinners because she had felt so sure she should never have any trading with sin herself. And lo! all these years her own daughter—her one beloved child, dearer than life itself—had been as guilty as this poor outcast from whom she had always drawn her skirts aside, as from a leper. Ay, her daughter had been the guiltier of the two. She was not spared that bitterness, even. Her harsh sense of justice forced her to acknowledge, even in that first hour, that this woman had borne herself nobly, while her daughter had been a despicable coward. It had been an erect, middle-aged woman who had come to give Patience Appleby her “come-uppings;” it was an old, broken-spirited one who went stumbling home in the early, cold twilight of the winter day. The fierce splendor of the sunset had blazed itself out; the world was a monotone in milky blue—save for one high line of dull crimson clouds strung along the horizon. A shower of snow-birds sunk in Mrs. Willis’s path, but she did not see them. She went up the path and entered her comfortable home; and she fell down upon her stiff knees beside the first chair she came to—and prayed as she had never prayed before in all her hard and selfish life. * * * * * When Mr. Willis came home to supper he found his wife setting the table as usual. He started for the bedroom, but she stopped him. “We’re a-going to use the front bedroom after this, father,” she said. “Why, what are we going to do that fer, mother?” “I’m a-going to give our’n to Patience Appleby.” “You’re a-going to—_what_, mother?” “I’m a-going to give our’n to Patience Appleby, I say. I’m a-going to bring her here to live, and she’s got to have the warmest room in the house, because her rheumatiz is worse ’n mine. I’m a-going after her myself to-morrow in the kerriage.” She turned and faced her husband sternly. “She’s confessed-up ev’rything. I was dead set she should, and she has. I know where she was at that time, and I know who was with her. I reckon I’d best be attoning up as well as Patience Appleby; and I’m going to begin by making her comf’terble and taking her into the church.” “Why, mother,” said the old man, weakly. His wife repressed him with one look. “Now, don’t go to talking back, father,” she said, sternly. “I reckon you kep’ it from me fer the best, but it’s turrable hard on me now. You get and wash yourself. I want that you should hold this candle while I fry the apple-fritters.” THE MOTHER OF “PILLS” THE MOTHER OF “PILLS”