und an outlet for the nervous tension under
which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed
impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and
able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only
feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all other
emotions, over the sense of loneliness and loss, over the appalling
accusation. Her writhing conscience was never quiet. She would gladly
have exchanged every hope of the future she dared harbor for five
minutes of the dead man's life in which to beg forgiveness.

In the short interval since the coroner's inquest public opinion had
crystallized in Prouty, and Kate's guilt was now a certainty in the
minds of its citizens.

"She done it, all right, only they can't prove it on her." Hiram
Butefish merely echoed the opinion of the community when he made the
assertion, upon seeing Kate turn the corner by the Prouty House and ride
down the main street the day following the delivery of Mr. Wentz's
summons.

Suffering had made Kate acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the
atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the
passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the
windows, in the bank president's uncompromising attitude, even in the
cashier's supercilious inventory as he looked her over.

Kate had entered the wide swinging doors of the bank simultaneously with
Mr. Abram Pantin, at whom Mr. Wentz had waved a long white hand and
requested him languidly to be seated. Since he already had motioned Kate
to the only chair beside the one he himself occupied in his enclosure,
it was clear there was no way for Mr. Pantin to accept the invitation
unless he sat on the floor. It chafed Pantin exceedingly to be
patronized by one who so recently had done his laundry, but since his
business at the bank was of an imperative nature he concealed his
annoyance with the best grace possible and waited.

Temporarily, at least, Mr. Wentz had lost his equilibrium. From washing
the town's soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and
radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a
little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the
cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy
of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his
undershirt and "joshed" the passersby.

Mr. Wentz had a notion, fo