d not chilled down to
. . ."

"Well, I guess I must be going now," said Nelly in the speech of the
valley. She went away through the side-door, opening and shutting it
with meticulous care, so that it would not make a sound. . . . As though a
sound could reach Cousin Hetty now!

"I don't like her biscuits," said Agnes. "She always puts too much sody
in." She added, in what was evidently the expression of an old dislike,
"And don't she look a fool, a great hulking critter like her, wearing
such shoes, teeterin' along on them heels."

"Oh well," said Marise, vaguely, "it's her idea of how to look pretty."

"They must cost an awful sight too," Agnes went on, scoldingly, "laced
halfway up her leg that way. And the Powerses as poor as Job's turkey.
The money she puts into them shoes'd do 'em enough sight more good if
'twas saved up and put into a manure spreader, I call it."

She had taken the biscuits out of the oven and was holding them
suspiciously to her nose, when someone came in at the front door and
walked down the hall with the hushed, self-conscious, lugubrious tip-toe
step of the day. It was Mr. Bayweather, his round old face rather pale.
"I'm shocked, unutterably shocked by this news," he said, and indeed he
looked badly shaken and scared. It came to Marise that Cousin Hetty had
been of about his age. He shook her hand and looked about for a chair.
"I came to see about which hymns you would like sung," he said. "Do you
know if Miss Hetty had any favorites?" He broke off to say, "Mrs.
Bayweather wished me to be sure to excuse her to you for not coming with
me tonight to see if there was anything she could do. But she was
stopped by old Mrs. Warner, just as we were leaving the house. Frank, it
seems, went off early this morning to survey some lines in the woods
somewhere on the mountain, and was to be back to lunch. He didn't come
then and hasn't showed up at all yet. Mrs. Warner wanted my wife to
telephone up to North Ashley to see if he had perhaps gone there to
spend the night with his aunt. The line was busy of course, and Mrs.
Bayweather was still trying to get them on the wire when I had to come
away. If she had no special favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light,
Amid th' Encircling Gloom' is always suitable, don't you?"

Something seemed to explode inside Marise's mind, and like a resultant
black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility loomed up, so
darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no bre