he dared not.

Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it
or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."

"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."

When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was
her visitor's face.

She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near
them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies,
Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah.
She's just as kind as can be--I know she is. She's looking down this
way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for
her. I'm going up that way, and--"

She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma
began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She
planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its
importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance
of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about
it.

Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and
that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or
three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window,
through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the
mid-summer insects came sonorously.

Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest
better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but
it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his
side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.

The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife,
after about ten o'clock, said:--

"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want
you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some
water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back.
I'll run right down and right back."

After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening,
waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then
she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down
the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.

The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes
came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up
the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window
which looked toward