“’Course she wuz,” assented Uncle Ranz. “I found that out right away, an’ me an’ Nathe talked it over. ‘You want to be keerful, Nathe,’ I told him, ‘an’ keep yer hands off her an’ not give her any claim agin ye. She’ll wear hersef out ’fore long.’ ‘You reckon she will?’ Nathe ast me, an’ I told him I wuz shore she would ef he kept still no matter what she done. That seemed to hep him, an’ he set his teeth an’ tried to stand it. He didn’t dare go to see Ann, fer that wuz what his wife wuz watchin’ fer. He knowed she’d find him out, day er night, an’ he walked straight as a shingle. The whole neighborhood thought Nathe wuz actin’ fine, an’ anybody would ’a’ been sorry for him the day that Nan called Ann’s name an’ put something else to it as plain as the Bible speaks it. Nathe set still, like he’d never move till jedgment-day, an’ her tongue hurtin’ him worse than rippin’ fire. I b’lieve Nan felt kinder discouraged after that, thinkin’ she’d never git him riled enough to beat her er drive her off. “It wuz awful the way she made a destroyment of things in the house. One day she wuz settin’ in the big room with Nathe, an’ she tuk a little penknife she had an’ begun to cut the threads out of a cushion that Lu had worked all over with little birds an’ leaves. ‘Don’t do that,’ said Nathe. ‘Lu made that hersef.’ An’ Nan says, ‘It’s mine now!’ an’ throwed it inter the fire. Nathe jumped up to grab it off the blazin’ logs, an’ Nan got right afore him. He’d ’a’ shoved her down, I reckon, if Cricket Sawyer hadn’t been there an’ held him back. Crick knew what Nan wuz after, the same as the rest of us, an’ she got so mad at him she never spoke to him afterwards, though they set at the same table three times a day. “She found out where Nathe kept the aperns an’ trimmin’s an’ things he wore at his lodge meetin’s. He thought more o’ them cooterments than anything he had. Nan got the key to the drawer, an’ when he come in one day she wuz all rigged out in ’em. ‘Don’t I look purty, Nathe?’ she says, walkin’ up an’ down ’fore him. An’ he wuz afraid to say a word, fer he knowed what she’d done to that cushion. ‘You won’t be wantin’ ’em any more,’ she says, ‘’cause yer lodge’ll turn ye out soon as I tell ’em what you’ve got over yander at the mill.’ Then she walked out an’ down the road with them things on, an’ Nathe never seen a stitch o’ the riggin’ afterwards. I fixed it up that she tied a rock to ’em an’ throwed ’em inter the creek.