"You can't mean that she would be worried about the divorce." Mrs. Cavanaugh feebly came to his assistance. "Sam and I were talking that over. There is no doubt that it was legal in every way. Old Whaley saw to that. Narrow-minded and hard as he was, he acted for the best in that case." "I see you don't understand." Joel dug the toe of his coarse shoe into a tuft of grass and mechanically pounded it with his heel. "You don't understand, because you don't know Tilly as well as I do. Mrs. Cavanaugh, how can I put it any better than to--to say that--no matter what was done in court, no matter what John Trott did that might be called 'desertion,' Tilly would never have married again if she had thought he was alive. I'd never have dared to ask her to marry me if I hadn't thought he was dead. I believed it--from the bottom of my soul I believed it, and--and, my friends, listen! I got her to believe it. I saw that she doubted it a little, and I worked and worked, and argued and argued, till finally I got her to believe it. But even then I'd have failed if Mrs. Trott hadn't--hadn't helped me. Mrs. Trott believed he was dead, and it was her belief and my talk that finally convinced Tilly. But now what is to be done?" "Why, nothing that I can see," Mrs. Cavanaugh answered. "All you have to do is to show Tilly that in no sense of the word is she bound by her first marriage. You seem to think she is worried over that." Joel shrugged his shoulders and took a deep breath. "You don't understand yet," he said, with a low groan. "She is excited--so excited that she can't sleep, but it is not the kind of excitement you think it is. She's heard the report that John Trott is still alive and she is afraid that it may not--by some chance--be true. I don't mean that she'd ever live with him again--now that she is--is a mother, or that she'd hold it against me for marrying her as I did; but to know that no harm came to him will make her happier than she's been for many a day. That is a thing I've got to face. She is the mother of my children, but she has never given me her whole heart and soul. She gave them to John Trott. She has never blamed him for any step he took. She thought that he left here for her sake, _and died for her sake_. Do you think I don't know that when she hears that he himself has never married in all these years--do you think that she will then love him less than she did? She always looked on him as the most wronged man alive. Do you suppose that she herself will turn against him now? In the name of God, what excuse would she have, and him still loving her as Mr. Cavanaugh thinks he does?" "I never looked at it that way," Mrs. Cavanaugh said. "You are getting me all mixed up. Does Mrs. Trott-- Have any of the reports got to her?"