n.--Tave, did you hear her, what she said?" She leaned towards him to
whisper her question as if she feared the dark might have ears.

"Yes, I heard her--damn her! I can't help it, Aurora."

"And you don't believe it--you _know_ it isn't true?"

Octavius drew rein for a moment; lifted his cap and passed the back of
his hand across his forehead to wipe off the sweat that stood in beads
on it. He turned to the woman beside him; her dark eyes were devouring
his face in the effort, or so it seemed, to anticipate his answer.

"Aurora, I've known you" (how he longed to say "loved you," but those
were not words for him to speak to Aurora Googe after thirty years of
silence) "ever since you was sixteen and old Mr. Googe took you, an
orphan girl, into his home; and I knew Louis Champney from the time he
was the same age till he died. What I've seen, I've seen; and what I
know, I know. Louis Champney loved you better'n he loved his life, and I
know you loved him; but if the Almighty himself should swear it's true
what Almeda Googe said, I wouldn't believe him--I wouldn't!"

The terrible nervous strain from which the woman was suffering lessened
under the influence of his speech. She leaned nearer.

"It was not true," she whispered again; "I know you'll believe me."

Her voice sounded weaker than before, and Octavius grew alarmed lest she
have another of what Hannah termed a "sinking spell" then and there. He
drew rein suddenly, and so tightly that the mare bounded forward and
pulled at a forced pace up the hill to The Gore.

"And she thought _that_ all these years--and I never knew. That's why
she hates my boy and won't help--oh, how could she!"

She shivered again. Octavius urged the mare to greater exertion. If only
he could get the stricken woman home before she had another turn.

"How could she?" he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any
she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's
hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little
too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What
the dev--whoa, there Kitty, what you about?"

He calmed the resentful beast, and they neared the house in The Gore at
a quick trot.

"You don't think she has ever spoken to any one before--not so, do you,
Tave? not to Louis ever?--"

"No, I don't, Aurora. Louis Champney wouldn't have stood that--I know
him well enough for that; but she might have hinted at a somethi