"Doc" Wiggins' party left in high good humor, the Squire and his party promising to follow immediately. Anna ran upstairs to get Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet and cloak, and Marthy, with a great air of mystery, got up, and, carefully closing the door after the girl, turned to the Squire and his wife with: "I've come to tell you something about her." "Something about Anna?" said the Squire indignantly. "Oh, no, not about our Anna," protested Mrs. Bartlett: "Why, she is the best kind of a girl; we are all devoted to her." "That's just the saddest part of it, I says to myself when I heard. How can I ever make up my mind to tell them pore, dear Bartletts, who took her in, and has been treating her like one of their own family ever since? It will come hard on, them, I sez, but that ought not to deter me from my duty." "Look here, Marthy," thundered the Squire, "if you've got anything to say about that girl, out with it----" "Well, land sake--you needn't be so touchy; she ain't kin to you, and you might thank your lucky stars she ain't." "Well, what is it, Marthy?" interposed Mrs. Bartlett. "Anna'll be down in a minute." "Well, you know, I have been sewin' down to Warren Center this last week, and Maria Thomson, from Belden, was visiting there, and naturally we all got to talking 'bout folks up this way, and that girl Anna Moore's name was mentioned, and I'm blest if Maria Thomson didn't recognize her from my description. "I was telling them 'bout the way she came here last June, pale as a ghost, and how she said her mother had just died and she'd been sick, and they knew right off who she was." Marthy loved few things as she did an interested audience. It was her meat and drink. "Well, she didn't call herself Moore in Belden, though that was her mother's name--she called herself Lennox," Marthy grinned. "She was one of those married ladies who forgot their wedding rings." The Squire knit his brows and his jaws came together with a snap; there were tears in Mrs. Bartlett's eyes. The gossip looked from one to the other to see the impression her words were making. It spurred her on to new efforts. She positively rolled the words about in delight before she could utter them. "Well, the girl's mother, who had been looking worried out of her skin, took sick and died all of a sudden, and the girl took sick herself very soon afterwards--and what do you think? A girl baby was born to Mrs. Lennox, but her husband never came near her. Fortunately, the baby did not live to embarrass her. It died, and she packed up and left Belden. That's when she came here. "And now," continued the village inquisitor, summing up her terrible evidence, "what are we to think of a girl called Miss Moore in one town and Mrs. Lennox in the other, with no sign of a wedding ring and no sign of a husband? And what are we going to think of that baby? It seems to me scandalous." And she leaned back in her chair and rocked furiously.