After his wife’s death an unmarried sister had become the railroad man’s housekeeper. She was a short strongly built woman with hard grey eyes and a determined jaw and sometimes she sat with the new girl. Then May hurried past without looking, but, when Maud sat alone, she went slowly, looking slyly at the pale face and drooped figure in the rocking chair. One day she smiled and the smile was returned. May lingered a moment. “It’s hot,” she said leaning over the fence, but before a conversation could be started she grew alarmed and hurried away. When the evening’s work was done on that evening and when the Edgley men had gone up town, May went into the street. Lillian was away from home and the sidewalk further up the street was deserted. The Edgley house was the last one on the street, and in the direction of town and on the same side of the street, there was—first a vacant lot, then a shed that had once been used as a blacksmith shop but that was now deserted, and after that the house where the new girl had come to live. When the soft darkness of the summer evening came May went a little way along the street and stopped by the deserted shed. The girl in the rocking chair on the porch saw her there, and seemed to understand May’s fear of her aunt. Arising she opened the door and peered into the house to be sure she was unobserved and then came down a brick walk to the gate and along the street to May, occasionally looking back to be sure she had escaped unnoticed. A large stone lay at the edge of the sidewalk before the shed and May urged the new girl to sit down beside her and rest herself. May was flushed with excitement. “I wonder if she knows? I wonder if she knows about me?” she thought. “I saw you wanted to be friendly and I thought I’d come and talk,” the new girl said. She was filled with a vague curiosity. “I heard something about you but I know it ain’t true,” she said. May’s heart jumped and her hands trembled. “I’ve let myself in for something,” she thought. The impulse to jump to her feet and run away along the sidewalk, to escape at once from the situation her hunger for companionship had created, almost overcame her and she half arose from the stone and then sat down again. She became suddenly angry and when she spoke her voice was firm, filled with indignation. “I know what you mean,” she said sharply, “you mean the fool story about me and Jerome Hadley in the woods?” The new girl nodded. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “My aunt heard it from a woman.”