they began to. They said that the woman made that little thing, though
she wasn't much over five years old, and small and babyish for her age,
do most of the work, what there was done; they said the house used to
look like a pig-sty when she didn't have help. They said the little
thing used to stand on a chair and wash dishes, and they'd seen her
carrying in sticks of wood most as big as she was many a time, and
they'd heard her mother scolding her. The woman was a fine singer, and
had a voice like a screech-owl when she scolded.

"The father was away most of the time, and when that happened he had
been away out West for some weeks. There had been a married man
hanging about the mother for some time, and folks had talked some; but
they weren't sure there was anything wrong, and he was a man very high
up, with money, so they kept pretty still for fear he would hear of it
and make trouble for them, and of course nobody was sure, though folks
did say afterward that the father of the child had ought to have been
told.

"But that was very easy to say; it wouldn't have been so easy to find
anybody who would have been willing to tell him such a thing as that,
especially when they weren't any too sure. He set his eyes by his
wife, too. They said all he seemed to think of was to earn money to
buy things to deck her out in. And he about worshiped the child, too.
They said he was a real nice man. The men that are treated so bad
mostly are real nice men. I've always noticed that.

"Well, one morning that man that there had been whispers about was
missing. He had been gone quite a while, though, before they really
knew that he was missing, because he had gone away and told his wife
that he had to go to New York on business and might be gone a week, and
not to worry if he didn't get home, and not to worry if he didn't
write, because he should be thinking from day to day that he might take
the next train home and there would be no use in writing. So the wife
waited, and she tried not to worry until it was two days over the week,
then she run into a neighbour's and fainted dead away on the floor; and
then they made inquiries and found out that he had skipped--with some
money that didn't belong to him, too.

"Then folks began to ask where was that woman, and they found out by
comparing notes that nobody had seen her since the man went away; but
three or four women remembered that she had told them that she thought
of taki