“I didn’t use to think yeh was aout-’n-aout bad,” she continued, more slowly; “they was a time when yeh might a made a decent man o’ yerself--ef yeh’d kep’ yer word to me.” This time he did not make an effort to answer. The task of sustaining the talk alone was too great for her. The tears came into her eyes, and blinded the last touches to the bandage. As it was completed, the Sheriff put his hand roughly on the prisoner’s shoulder. The meaning of this movement spread over her mind, and appalled her. With a gesture of decision she stood on tiptoe, lifted her face up to Milton’s, and kissed him. Then, as he was led away, she turned to the onlookers, and said defiantly, between incipient sobs: “I daon’t keer! Ef t’ was th’ last thing I ever done in my life, I’d dew it. We was--engaged--once’t on a time!” CHAPTER XXXIV.--AT “M’TILDY’S” BEDSIDE AGAIN. Do you clip over and tell Annie,” John had said to Seth, when the first excitement of the scene had passed off, and they stood at the kitchen window, watching the Sheriff’s buggy fade off in the dusk down the hill toward Thessaly jail. “It’s the thing for you to do--the quicker the better!” Annie had been home from her day’s task some minutes, and sat by her grandmother’s bedside. The patient was in a semi-comatose state, breathing with unnatural heaviness, and Samantha had been dispatched with all haste to bring a doctor from Thessaly. It seemed terribly probable that Mrs. Warren’s last day had come. Yet as she sat by the curtained recess, holding in her’s the withered hand which lay inanimate on the high edge of the bed, Annie still thought very little of the great change impending over her home; she had faced this death in life so long that its climax did not startle her, or wear the garb of strangeness. Instead, she was pondering the unaccountable, unwelcome fact with which Samantha had greeted her on her return--that Isabel was in the adjoining room, and had asked to see her. What could it mean? What could Isabel’s purpose be in coming? And ought she to sacrifice her own feelings to the dictates of politeness, and go in to see this wicked, cruel woman? Perhaps she had come to retract and apologize for the fearful words of Tuesday. Perhaps her intention was to reiterate them, or worse, to recount that now the whole world would know of them--and gloat over her pain. No, that could scarcely be, for since her interview with Milton Annie felt satisfied at least of Seth’s innocence. But still something new might have been disclosed--Isabel might have evil tidings of some sort with which to overwhelm her afresh. What should she do?