"Rovin' Kate. She killed him pointing her finger at him--so." "She's got an evil eye. Everybody's afraid o' the crazy ol' Trollope!" "Nonsense! She isn't half as crazy as the most of us," said the lawyer. "In my opinion she had a good reason for pointing her finger at that man. She came from the same town he did over in Vermont. Ye don't know what happened there." The doctor arrived. The crowds made way for him. He knelt beside the still figure and made the tests. He rose and shook his head, saying: "It's all over. Let one o' these boys go down and bring the undertaker." Benjamin Grimshaw, the richest man in the township, was dead, and I have yet to hear of any mourners. Three days later I saw his body lowered into its grave. The little, broken-spirited wife stood there with the same sad smile on her face that I had noted when I first saw her in the hills. Rovin' Kate was there in the clothes she had worn Christmas day. She was greatly changed. Her hair was neatly combed. The wild look had left her eyes. She was like one whose back is relieved of a heavy burden. Her lips moved as she scattered little red squares of paper into the grave. I suppose they thought it a crazy whim of hers--they who saw her do it. I thought that I understood the curious bit of symbolism and so did the schoolmaster, who stood beside me. Doubtless the pieces of paper numbered her curses. "The scarlet sins of his youth are lying down with him in the dust," Hacket whispered as we walked away together. END OF BOOK TWO BOOK THREE Which is the Story of the Chosen Ways CHAPTER XV UNCLE PEABODY'S WAY AND MINE I am old and love my ease and sometimes dare to think that I have earned it. Why do I impose upon myself the task of writing down these memories, searching them and many notes and records with great care so that in every voice and deed the time shall speak? My first care has been that neither vanity nor pride should mar a word of all these I have written or shall write. So I keep my name from you, dear reader, for there is nothing you can give me that I want. I have learned my lesson in that distant time and, having learned it, give you the things I stand for and keep myself under a mask. These things urge me to my task. I do it that I may give to you--my countrymen--the best fruitage of the great garden of my youth and save it from the cold storage of unknowing history. It is a bad thing to be under a heavy obligation to one's self of which, thank God, I am now acquitted. I have known men who were their own worst creditors. Everything they earned went swiftly to satisfy the demands of Vanity or Pride or Appetite. I have seen them literally put out of house and home, thrown neck and crop into the street, as it were, by one or the other of these heartless creditors--each a grasping usurer with unjust claims.