Her fervor had flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes until the vision of young loveliness before him made Gus forget that he was a woman-hater. He wished he were a good-looking young fellow with some money. She'd get everything she wanted soon enough. "You better not let Temperance Crandall hear you talk like that," warned Gus. "She'd tell everybody from Stoughton to Fort Atkinson." "What does she look like?" Early Ann asked with excitement. "Has she got a long scraggly neck and a raggedy black parasol, and a black shawl, and does she wear glasses?" "That's her," said Gus. "Let me get my fingers around that hag's neck," said Early Ann. "You certainly do talk rough," said the hired man. "I wouldn't want to meet you alone somewhere on a dark night." "She was over here today telling tales about me," said Early Ann. "They shut the door and I was too proud to listen. She's just a.... Oh, Gus, she's just a nasty old busy-body. Mrs. Brailsford came out in the kitchen as white as a ghost after she left and asked for the camphor." "There's something mysterious about you," said Gus. "I knew it from the night you came." "It's just talk," said Early Ann. "They don't know a thing. There's nothing in my life to be ashamed of.... But it seems like old ladies just can't leave a girl alone. There's nobody in my past who...." Early Ann broke off abruptly in the middle of her sentence. Her eyes grew large and the terror crept down her cheeks and caught at the comers of her mouth. She started to scream, then bit her knuckles and with great deliberation turned away from the apparition at the window-pane. By the time Gus had rushed out into the yard no one was to be seen and the starlit night was silent and empty. In the parlor Sarah still read to Stanley, unaware of anything beyond her own circle of lamp light. But as Early Ann listened in the throbbing stillness she heard the older woman falter and stop. Then she heard quiet weeping. "Why ... what are you crying about, Mother?" she heard Stanley ask. "Nothing, nothing at all," Sarah said. "I--I guess I'm just tired, that's all." CHAPTER III 1 The basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Brailsford Junction rang with the shouts of children playing tag despite the scolding of their busy mothers. Flushed matrons buzzed in laden down with loaves of homemade bread, pans of biscuits ready for the oven, mason jars full of sweet, sour, and mixed pickles, bags of ground coffee, and huge pots of dressed and dismembered chickens so tender and plump that their flesh would have warranted the term "voluptuous" if stewed by a less austere generation. Joe Whalen, town drunk, general roustabout, and janitor of the church was starting a paper fire in the furnace. "Put in more paper," shouted Old Mrs. Crandall, mother of Temperance, who had left her room for the first time in months for this occasion. "Terrible weather for rheumatism, ain't it?" "Terrible," shouted Joe.