However, the tide soon turned again. On the Sunday after the banns between Dorothy and Eugene had been published, Burr had been seen to walk home openly with Madelon from evening meeting; and it was soon known that he was courting her regularly. Then darker whispers were circulated. People said now that they were accomplices in attempted crime. That black atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, which gathers nowhere more easily than in a New England town, was thick around Burr and Madelon. They breathed, though as yet it was in less degree, the same noxious air as did the persecuted Quakers and witches of bygone times. The gases which lie at the bottom of human souls, which gossip and suspicious imaginations upstir, are deadlier than those at the bottoms of old wells. Still Madelon and Burr knew nothing of it, nor Burr's mother, nor Lot, nor any of the Hautville men. The attitude of Madelon's father and brothers towards herself and Burr had done much to strengthen suspicion. High voices and strange remarks had been overheard by folk strolling casually, of a pleasant evening, past the Hautville house. In truth, at first old David Hautville and all his sons except Eugene had risen against Burr and Madelon, all their pride in arms that she should return to this man who had once forsaken her for another. But later they had yielded, for their pride was undermined by their own gloomy convictions as to Madelon, which they confided not to one another. However, the boy Richard still greeted Burr surlily, with a fierce black flash under frowning brows, and scarcely spoke to Madelon at all until the day before her marriage. That was set some two months after Dorothy's. Burr and Madelon, during the days of their betrothal, were as closely beset by spies on every hand as a party of Madelon's old kindred might have been, encamped in a wooded country, where every bush veiled savage eyes and every tree stood in front of a foeman, but they did not know it. Folk knew when Mrs. Gordon went to visit her son's betrothed, though 'twas on a dark evening. They knew what she wore, and how long she stayed. They knew when Madelon returned her visit; they knew, to remember, in many cases, more details of their daily lives than Burr and Madelon themselves. Madelon had few wedding preparations to make. The wedding-garments which she had stitched with sorrow for her marriage with Lot would serve her now. She employed her time in increasing still further the household stores of linen for her father's and brothers' use, when she should be gone, and in making a great stock of sweet-sauce, jelly, and cordials from the fruits and berries of the season.