A weak female tread made itself heard in the hallway, followed by a sharp voice from a door in the rear. "Was it the cat, Jenny?" "No; the door just seems to have blown open. The catch is broken." Swift, strong steps advanced with an effect of angry suspicion. "I don't believe it blew open. More likely the cat clawed it open." The steps which the voice preceded seemed to halt at the open door, as if falling back from it, and Wallace and Blakeley, looking down, saw by the dim flare of the hall lamp the face of Briggs confronting the face of Mrs. Betterson from the outer darkness. They saw the sick girl, whose pallor they could not see, supporting herself by the stairs-post with one hand and pressing the other to her side. "Oh! It's _you_, Mr. Briggs," the landlady said, with a note of inculpation. "What made you leave the door open?" The spectators could not see the swift change in Briggs's face from terror to savage desperation, but they noted it in his voice. "Yes--yes! It's me. I just--I was just-- No I won't, either! You'd better know the truth. I was taking Phillips's bag out to him. He was afraid to come in for it, because he didn't want to see you, the confounded coward! He's left." "Left? And he said he would stay till spring! Didn't he, Jenny?" "I don't remember--" the girl weakly gasped, but her mother did not heed her in her mounting wrath. "A great preacher _he'll_ make. What'd he say he left for?" "He didn't say. Will you let me up-stairs?" "No, I won't, till you tell me. You know well enough, between you." "Yes, I do know," Briggs answered, savagely. "He left because he was tired of eating sole-leather for steak, and fire-salt pork, and tar for molasses, and butter strong enough to make your nose curl, and drinking burnt-rye slops for coffee and tea-grounds for tea. And so am I, and so are all of us, and--and-- Will you let me go up-stairs now, Mrs. Betterson?" His voice had risen, not so high but that another voice from the parlor could prevail over it: a false, silly, girl voice, with the twitter of piano-keys as from hands swept over the whole board to help drown the noise of the quarrel in the hall. "Oh yes, I'll sing it again, Mr. Saunders, if you sa-a-a-y." Then this voice lifted itself in a silly song, and a silence followed the voices in the hall, except for the landlady's saying, brokenly: "Well, all right, Mr. Briggs. You can go up to your room for all me. I've tried to be a mother to you boys, but if _this_ is what I get for it!" The two at the threshold of Briggs's room retreated within, as he bounded furiously upon them and slammed the door after him. It started open again, from the chronic defect of the catch, but he did not care. "Well, Briggs, I hope you feel better now," Blakeley began. "You certainly told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing _but_ the truth. But I wonder you had the heart to do it before that sick girl."