“Yes,” she said. “She got home in Jeff Woods’s hack about a hour ago. All the neighbors is over there now. She acts so quar! She hain’t seemed to keer a speck about the cow, nur the cat, nur the chickens. As soon as she got ’er things off, she jest sot down an’ drooped. She don’t look well. The general opinion is that Amos an’ his wife have sent ’er home, fer she won’t talk about them. She acts mighty funny. Jest as I started out I happened to remark that you’d be astonished to heer she was back, an’ I never seed sech a quar look in a body’s face. But,” she concluded after a pause, “they couldn’t ‘a’ treated ’er so awful bad, fer she’s got dead loads o’ finery.” That night Joel closed up his store earlier than usual, and when he came into the sitting-room he brought an armful of big logs and put them in the chimney. Then before a roaring fire he sat reflectively, without reading the paper he had brought with him, as was his wont. Betsey sat in the chimney-corner knitting, and looking first at him and then peering through the window toward Mrs. Gibbs’s cottage. “Brother Joel,” she said, suddenly. “You are a-actin’ quar, too. You must know some ‘n’ about what happened to Mis’ Gibbs, ur why don’t you go over thar an’ see ’er like the rest o’ the neighbors? They’ve all been but you. She ’ll think strange of it.” “I don’t see what good I could do,” he answered; and he began to punch the fire, causing a stream of sparks to mount upward with a fusillade of tiny explosions. Betsey knitted silently for a few minutes longer, then she rose and stood at the window. “She’s got ’er lamp on the table an’ a paper in ’er lap, but she hain’t a-readin’ of it,” said Betsey. “It looks jest like she’s a-goin’ to commence ’er lonely broodin’ life over ag’in. Some ‘n’ seems wrong with ‘er, as good an’ sweet as she is. She kinder fancied she’d be happy with Amos, an’ mebby when she got ’im with ’er she begun to pine fer her ole home. Now she’s back, an’ I reckon she hardly knows what she does want. I say, perhaps that may be her fix.” “Mebby it is,” admitted the storekeeper, briefly. Betsey turned on him quickly. There was a peculiar aggressive sparkle in her eyes, a set look of determination on her face. “Brother Joel,” she said, “you’ve jest got to have a grain of common sense. You’ve got to go over thar this minute an’ see ‘er. Ef you don’t she ain’t a-goin’ to sleep a wink. I know women, an’ I’ve knowed Mis’ Gibbs a long time.” Joel drew his feet from the fire and wedged his heels under the rung of his chair. The muscles of his face were twitching. There was no mistaking Betsey’s tone. She sat down near him and laid her thin, tremulous hand on his knee. “Do as I tell you, brother. Don’t be back’ard. You can’t hide nothin’.” Joel rose. He tried to smile indifferently as he went to a little mirror on the wall and brushed his hair and beard. “You must wish me good luck, then, sister,” he said, huskily. “I ain’t no ways shore what she will do about me.”