there to say?"

"He doesn't gener'ly keep still because he has nothin' to say."

The man gave a muffled, explosive laugh, and pushed back his chair. Mrs.
Randall's eyelids reddened. She laid down her work and got up.

"I guess I'll take off this dress before I clear up the things," she
said, in a voice of temporary defeat.

Her husband picked up the empty water-pail as he left the kitchen, and
filled it at the well. When he brought it back there was no one
visible.

"Need any wood, Tildy?" he called toward the bedroom where she was
dressing.

"No, I guess not." The voice was indistinct, but she might have had her
skirt over her head. Alex made a half-conciliatory pause. He preferred
to know that she was not crying.

"How you been feelin' to-day?"

"Middlin'."

She was not crying. The man gave his trousers a hitch of relief, and
went back to his work.

There had been a scandal in Alex Randall's early married life. The
scattered country community had stood aghast before the certainty of his
guilt, and there had been a little lull in the gossip while they waited
to see what his wife would do.

Matilda Hazlitt had been counted a spirited girl before her marriage,
and there were few of her neighbors who hesitated to assert that she
would take her baby and go back to her father's house. It had been a
nine-days' wonder when she had elected to believe in her husband. The
injured girl had been an adopted member of the elder Randall's
household, half servant, half daughter, and it was whispered that her
love for Alex was older than his marriage. Just how much of the
neighborhood talk had reached Matilda's ears no one knew. The girl had
gone away, and the community had accepted Alex Randall for his wife's
sake, but not unqualifiedly.

Mrs. Randall had never been very strong, and of late she had become
something of an invalid, as invalidism goes in the country, where women
are constantly ailing without any visible neglect of duty. It had "broke
her spirit," the women said. Some of the younger of them blamed her, but
in the main it was esteemed a wifely and Christian course that she
should make this pretense of confidence in her husband's innocence for
the sake of her child. No one wondered that it wore upon her health.

Alex had been grateful, every one acknowledged, and it was this fact of
his dogged consideration for Matilda's comfort that served more than
anything else to reinstate him somewhat in the good opin