’long slick, when Mis’ Weston come an’ bust it all up. She said she lent him the hoss, an’ it war hern.” The narrator stopped to observe the effect of this announcement. He felt repaid. “I don’t believe it,” sobbed Uncle David. “I hearn her say it,” said the man. His complete enjoyment of the effect was marred by the tears of that poor old man. “We had to let him off, o’ course, for the stealin’, an’ we couldn’t hang him for the shootin’ o’ Jake Mills, ’cause some o’ the boys said they’d never hang on nigger evidence, an’ we hadn’t none other. Anyhow, that nigger he drowned hisself in lies right away, an’ we didn’t lay much on what he done tole us, you bet. But we was powerful sorry a’terwards when we seen what we’d done. She’s gone off with him plumb.” “No, no, not that,” said Uncle David, “tain’t so, you didn’t un’erstan’.” “We axed her war she a-gwine with him, an’ she said, ‘yes,’ I hearn her say so.” “She was on’y goin’ home,” said Uncle David tremulously. “She had not come home half an hour ago,” observed Madame. “They rode ’long to the South Fork, an’ that don’t lie on her road home from Union Mills, do it? I stayed behin’ at the Store, the boys was talkin’ if they hadn’t bes’ go right a’ter him an’ shoot him anyhow, but we ’lowed he’d ha’ showed fight then, an’ maybe she’d ha’ been killed in the shootin’. Yer can’t never say who’ll be hit when everybody’s firin’ like blazes. I didn’t quit the Mills for a spell, an’ mos’ the boys was ’ready gone home, an’ they allowed I oughter tell yer we done our best for yer.” They thanked him, and he went his way. “Somebody has got to tell Brother Ezra, he will be coming home to-night,” said the blacksmith, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. “Poor Ezra! What a home-coming!” Brother Green remained silent for a long time, then he spoke again in a soft low voice, almost as if he was communing with himself. “When I laid my young wife in her grave with her babe on her breast, fifteen years ago last Midsummer, I thought I had known the greatest sorrow possible to the human heart. But my loss was not so great as Brother Ezra’s, his cup is filled to the brim, and oh, how bitter! How great a power of suffering lies in the human heart!” “It is through suffering that the heart is purified,” said Madame to him in reply.