But here they were interrupted. Dovey, the blacksmith, hearing of the calamity, together with the fact that it was his wife who had assisted in administering the suspected doses, deemed it his duty to look into the affair a little, and to resent it. He had left his forge and a bar of iron red-hot in it, and come tearing along in his leather apron, his shirt-sleeves stripped up to the elbow, and his arms grimy. A dark-eyed, good-natured little man in general, was Dovey, but exploding with rage at the present moment. "Now then, Abel Crew, what do you mean by selling pills to poison people?" demanded he, pushing back the door with a bang, and stepping in fiercely. Duffham, foreseeing there was going to be a contest, and having no time to waste, took his departure. "I have not sold pills to poison people," replied Abel. "Look here," said Dovey, folding his black arms. "Be you going to eat them pills, or be you not? Come!" "What do you mean, Dovey?" "What do I mean! Ain't my meaning plain? Do you own to having selled a box of pills to Hester Reed last winter?--be you thinking to eat that there fact, and deny of it? Come, Abel Crew!" "I remember it well," readily spoke up Abel. "Mrs. Reed came here one day, complaining that her head ached continually, and her side often had a dull pain in it, and asked me to give her something. I did so; I gave her a box of pills. It was early in January, I think. I know there was ice on the ground." "Then do you own to them pills," returned Dovey, more quietly, his fierceness subdued by Abel's civility. "It were you that furnished 'em?" "I furnished the box of pills I speak of, that Hester Reed had from me in the winter. There's no mistake about that." "And made 'em too?" "Yes, and made them." "Well, I'm glad to hear you say that; and now don't you go for to eat your words later, Abel Crew. Our Ann, my wife, helped to give them there two pills to the children; and I'm not a-going to let her get into trouble over it. You've confessed to the pills, and I'm a witness." "My pills did not kill the children, Dovey," said Abel, in a pleasant tone, resting his lame foot upon an opposite chair. "Not kill 'em?" "No, that they did not. I've not made pills all these years to poison children at last." "But what done it if the pills didn't?" "How can I say? 'Twasn't my pills." "Dr. Duffham says it was the pills. And he----" "Dr. Duffham says it was?" "Reed telled me that the doctor asked outright, all in a flurry, what his wife had gave the babies, and she said she had gave 'em nothing but them there two pills of Abel Crew's. Duffham said the pills must have had poison in 'em, and he asked for the box; and Hester Reed, she give him the box, and he sealed it up afore their eyes with his own seal." Abel nodded. He knew that any suspected medicine must in such a case be sealed up.