time in the night to Ridgefield, which next mornin’ was all up in arms wus than the day before. “My grandmother lived here, and she said half the women was runnin’ the street bareheaded, and some with their sleeves up and their kitchen aprons on, tellin’ the news of the arrest to them who hadn’t heard it, and then makin’ a bee line for the Dalton house, where Miss Dalton still set in her muddy white gown, with her hair streamin’ down her back, and she as cold and white as a block of marble. She’d set up all night; they couldn’t make her go to bed, and when the men got back and she heard St. John was took, she turned blue, but never spoke nor stirred. In the room with her was the officer watchin’ her and Mari, who was in hysterics most of the time. They’d laid Mr. Dalton out beautiful in his best clothes, and Miss Dalton had been in to see him. They tried to shet his eyes, but couldn’t, and they was wide open, starin’ at you, and when Miss Dalton see ’em she cried: ‘Oh, John, John, don’t look at me like that,’ and fell down in a swound, and they didn’t know for a spell but she was dead. “They made him the biggest funeral Ridgefield ever seen, and folks come for miles and miles around. Why, Joel took in for drinks and keepin’ horses more’n he’d took for months. ’Twas better than general trainin’, or a cattle show for him. Miss Dalton sat like a stone with folks starin’ at her as if they’d never seen her before, and that strange man always close to her. When she got back from the grave she was that wilted they had to carry her into the house and put her on the bed, where she lay, never movin’, nor speakin’, only moanin’, like some dumb critter in pain. “They took her next day, and the screetch she gin when they told her she was arrested was so awful that folks in the road heard it; then she froze up ag’in, except when she looked at her little boy. They say ’twas touchin’, and made ’em all cry when she bid him good-bye, with him a sayin’, ‘Take, mam-ma; take me,’ and clingin’ to her dress she had on,—the silk one Mr. Dalton had bought her and the gold beads round her neck.” Here Uncle Zacheus’ feelings so overcame him a second time that he could scarcely finish the story, and tell of Mrs. Dalton’s farewell to her baby and home and Maria, against whom there did not seem sufficient evidence to warrant her arrest. She would be needed as a witness later, and was left with the child whom Mrs. Dalton entrusted to her, saying, as she took his little hands from her dress and put them in Maria’s, “It is preposterous to believe they can find me guilty. But if the worst happens, and I never come back, take good care of Robbie, and tell him all the good you know of his mother.” Then like some tragic queen she turned to the officer, and, with a proud toss of her head, said to him, “Sir, I am ready.”