at were
the breath of his body. There she was in spasms of agony, and beside her
the great heavy log she'd tried to throw him. I can't ever forgive her
for turning against you, and spoiling your childhood as she has, but I
couldn't forgive anybody else for abusing her. Maggie has got no mercy
on her, but Maggie didn't see what I did, and I've never tried to make
it very clear to her. It's been a little too plain for me ever since.
Whenever I look at your mother's face, I see what she saw, so I hold my
tongue and say, in my heart, 'Give her a mite more time.' Some day it
will come. She does love you, Elnora. Everybody does, honey. It's just
that she's feeling so much, she can't express herself. You be a patient
girl and wait a little longer. After all, she's your mother, and you're
all she's got, but a memory, and it might do her good to let her know
that she was fooled in that."

"It would kill her!" cried the girl swiftly. "Uncle Wesley, it would
kill her! What do you mean?"

"Nothing," said Wesley Sinton soothingly. "Nothing, honey. That was just
one of them fool things a man says, when he is trying his best to be
wise. You see, she loved him mightily, and they'd been married only a
year, and what she was loving was what she thought he was. She hadn't
really got acquainted with the man yet. If it had been even one more
year, she could have borne it, and you'd have got justice. Having been a
teacher she was better educated and smarter than the rest of us, and
so she was more sensitive like. She can't understand she was loving a
dream. So I say it might do her good if somebody that knew, could tell
her, but I swear to gracious, I never could. I've heard her out at the
edge of that quagmire calling in them wild spells of hers off and on for
the last sixteen years, and imploring the swamp to give him back to her,
and I've got out of bed when I was pretty tired, and come down to see
she didn't go in herself, or harm you. What she feels is too deep for
me. I've got to respectin' her grief, and I can't get over it. Go home
and tell your ma, honey, and ask her nice and kind to help you. If she
won't, then you got to swallow that little lump of pride in your neck,
and come to Aunt Maggie, like you been a-coming all your life."

"I'll ask mother, but I can't take your money, Uncle Wesley, indeed I
can't. I'll wait a year, and earn some, and enter next year."

"There's one thing you don't consider, Elnora," said the man earne