and groaned aloud.

"What have I done? What have I done?" he cried.

Miss Jane supported the girl in her strong arms with a grim display of
affection, but her attitude towards Bradley Gaither was uncompromising.

"Don't alarm yourself, Mr. Gaither," she said; "this poor child'll come
too, quick enough. Folks don't fling off the'r misery this easy!"

Rose revived after a while, but she seemed to have no desire to talk to
her father. After a copious use of camphor, Miss Jane fixed Rose
comfortably on the lounge, and the girl lay there and gazed at the
ceiling, the picture of wide-eyed despair. Bradley Gaither paced the
room like one distracted. His sighs were heart-rending. When Miss Jane
succeeded in getting him out of the room, he paced up and down the
entry, moving his lips and groaning as though in great mental agony.
Failing to understand what emotions he was at the mercy of, Miss Jane
failed to sympathise with him. To her mind his display of grief bore no
sort of proportion to the cause, and she had a woman's contempt for any
manifestation of weakness in man, even the weakness of grief.

"I'll pray to the Lord to forgive me!" he cried out piteously.

"That's right," exclaimed Miss Jane, in her decisive way. "But if the
grace of pra'r was in the hinges of the knee, I know a heap of folks
that'd be easy in the mind."

Every word she spoke cut like a knife, but not until long after did
Miss Inchly realise the fact. When she did realise it, it is to be
feared she hugged the remembrance of it to her bosom with a sort of
grim thankfulness that Providence had so happily fashioned her words
and directed her tongue.

As time passed on, the Pinetuckians became aware that a great change
had come over both Bradley Gaither and his daughter. The father grew
old before his time, and fell into a decline, as his neighbours
expressed it. The daughter grew more beautiful, but it was beauty of a
kind that belonged to devoutness; so that in contemplating it the minds
of men were led in the direction of mercy and charity and all manner of
good deeds.

One night, a year or more after the trial and sentence of Jack Carew, a
negro on horseback rode to Squire Inchly's door, and said that his
master, Bradley Gaither, desired the Squire to come to him at once. The
worthy magistrate was prompt to obey the summons; and when he arrived
at the Gaither place, he found that the preacher and other neighbours
had also been summoned. Bradley