"I'll run up, I guess," the visitor answered, with assumed lightness. "Joel, wait for me. I'll be down soon." "Won't you come in, Joel?" Mrs. Whaley asked. "No, I thank you, Mrs. Whaley," he said. "I'll watch my horse out here." He remained seated in the buggy, slightly bending forward. A horse-fly was teasing the shuddering back of his horse, and he deftly flicked at it with his whip till he had knocked it away. A man in a field across the road was gathering yellow pumpkins and loading them into a cart. Joel himself had several acres of pumpkins ready for harvesting, and ordinarily he would have been interested in the quantity and quality of this farmer's product, but there were graver things on his mind now. Surely Martha Jane was staying a long time up-stairs. Had she put it delicately enough? Had she omitted to mention the fact of Trott's taking the child away with him? Joel had intended emphasizing that, for it was a thing any wife would be proud to hear of the man she had married. The time dragged even more slowly now. Old Whaley left his seat, walked around to the well, drew up a bucket of water, and drank from the bucket itself, tilting it forward with both his hands. Then Mrs. Whaley went into the house. Presently Martha Jane came down the stairs and out into the yard. "Good-by, Mrs. Whaley," she called out. "I must be going now." "Good-by, Martha Jane!" from within the house. "Come again when you find the time." "I will, thank you, Mrs. Whaley. You must come out to see mother. She never gets into town, and you mustn't count visits with her." There was a response to this which Joel did not hear, for he was studying his sister's face as he stood ready to help her into the buggy. "Well?" he said, as they started to drive on. "What did you do?" "Oh, don't ask me--don't ask me!" Martha Jane's eyes were filling, her lips twitching. "Oh, Joel, it was awful--simply awful! I'm glad you did not try to tell her. She stood tottering pitifully and looking as white as a dead person. I thought she was going to faint, and would have called her mother if she hadn't stopped me. It seemed to take away all the hope she had left. She sees it exactly as Mr. Cavanaugh does--that her husband intends to disappear for good and all. She thinks it was for her sake, too. She said so. She declared she did not blame him at all, and when I told her about that child she said she understood that, too, and knew he did it for the little girl's good--that the child was facing a terrible future." "Well, well, is that all?" Joel inquired, huskily. "I left her seated at a window," Martha Jane continued. "I tried to get her to promise to be calm and hopeful, but all the old strength and energy seemed to have left her. I'm afraid, very much afraid, that she will never get over it. She has borne a lot already and this shock is the last straw."