“Ess—an’ a very nice fashion of penmanship. Yet all written wi’ needles, so to say, as stabbed the poor young youth cruel. He gasped when he read it, as if he’d swallowed his meat wrong way. Then he handed it to me. She just said as she’d been wickedly deceived in him, and that she’d rather have trusted the sun not to shine than believe he could have acted so bad to her. An’ she also hoped the Lord would forgive him for treating a poor maiden so crooked.” “That weern’t enough for Jonas Lethbridge, was it?” “No, by Gor! He went straight to her, an’ there was fiery words; but the truth, or what she thought was truth, he never knowed. Her love had turned to hate in a single night. He pressed for reasons; and she said that to ax for reasons was the worst insult of all, seeing she knowed the whole secret truth about him. Not a word more could he get, though he tried, and was patient as Job for an hour of talk. Then, having his spark o’ passion like any other man, he called her a wanton, wicked jilt an’ left her. An’ no girl ever deserved hard names more than she.” “’Tis a dark story, to be sure. That’s why us never heard the third axing of the banns, then?” “It happened last spring, afore the last axing. Then, come winter, Dinah Hannaford’s mother died, an’ next thing us heard was that she’d got on wi’ Amos Thorn again.” “A very womanly piece of work.” “I don’t know whether ’tis woman or man be at the bottom. I’d throw blame on Thorn if I dared wi’out running danger of violence; but I be old an’ weak, an’ ’tis no good saying things you can’t enforce wi’ your right arm. Still, I do think he kindiddled her away from my boy.” “’Tis no libel to think it, anyway,” said Mr. Chugg, and the sexton nodded. “There’s parties as ought to be punished wheether or no,” he said, “and I hope the A’mighty won’t let it pass, an’ that I’ll live to see the wicked come by their deserts.” * * * * * A mile away Amos Thorn and Dinah walked together where immortal flowers bloomed about them at the dawn of June. “Oh, but you’ll be true to me, dear heart—I can trust you?” she asked with a pleading voice. The big blond man turned and hugged her to himself and kissed her. “For ever an’ ever, Amen, my pretty!” he said. CHAPTER III “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope—” The clods fell; the familiar rite ended. There was a smell of earth and bruised grass. Dinah Thorn looked down into her husband’s grave; and her child of three, clutching tight his mother’s black-gloved hand, peeped fearfully into the abyss that had swallowed his father. Suddenly the infant appeared to realize his loss, and howled with all his little heart.