my
crutches on the ground, and I stooped to pick them up to go home--to
stop words; for what were words, and she in her grave?--when I heard
young Barber's voice, and I looked over the wall, and see he had
stopped, in his madness and folly and the wickedness of his heart,
right opposite the house he had brought shame to, and he was
speaking to father through the door.

I couldn't hear what he said, but he seemed to expect an answer,
and, when none came, he called out a little louder, 'Oh, well,
you've no call to hold your head so high, anyhow!' And for the way
he said it I could have killed him myself, but for having been
brought up to know that two wrongs don't make a right, and
'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.'

They was at prayers in the church, and there was no sound in the
street but the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs, and young Barber,
he stood there looking in at our door with that little sneering
smile on his face, and the next minute he was running for his life
for the church, where all the folks were, and father after him like
a madman, with his long knife in his hand that he used to cut the
leather with. It all happened in a flash.

Barber come running up the dusty road in his black, and passed me as
I stood by the churchyard gate, and up towards the church; but
sudden in the path he stopped short, his eyes seeming starting out
of his head as he looked at Ellen's grave--not that he could see her
name, the headstone being turned the other way,--and he put his
hands before his eyes and stood still a-trembling, like a rabbit
when the dogs are on it, and it can't find no way out. Then he cried
out, 'No, no, cover her face, for God's sake!' and crouched down
against the footstone, and father, coming swift behind him, passed
me at the gate, and he ran his knife through Barber's back twice as
he crouched, and they rolled on the path together.

Then all the folks in church that had heard the scream, they come
out like ants when you walk through an ant-heap. Young Barber was
holding on to the headstone, the blood running out through his new
broadcloth, and death written on his face in big letters.

I ran to lift up father, who had fallen with his face on the grave,
and as I stooped over him, young Barber he turned his head towards
me, and he says in a voice I could hardly catch, such a whisper it
was, 'Was there a child? I didn't know there was a child--a little
child in her arm, and flower