"Wonder how they're finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little more red up up there. You know,"--she paused, and feeling gathered,--"it seems kind of _sneaking_: locking her up in town and coming out here to get her own house to turn against her!" "But, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife, "the law is the law." "I s'pose 'tis," answered Mrs. Hale shortly. She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she said aggressively: "The law is the law--and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to cook on this?"--pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven--and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster--. She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: "A person gets discouraged--and loses heart." The sheriff's wife had looked from the stove to the sink--to the pail of water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes of the sheriff's wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was gently: "Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We'll not feel them when we go out." Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, "Why, she was piecing a quilt," and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces. Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks out on the table. "It's log-cabin pattern," she said, putting several of them together. "Pretty, isn't it?" They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying: "Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?" The sheriff threw up his hands. "They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!" There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney said briskly: "Well, let's go right out to the barn and get that cleared up." "I don't see as there's anything so strange," Mrs. Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on the three men--"our taking up our time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence. I don't see as it's anything to laugh about." "Of course they've got awful important things on their minds," said the sheriff's wife apologetically.