, for the poor lady to answer! But Mrs.
Merrill was no coward.

"It is partly true, I believe."

"Partly?" said Miss Lucretia, sharply.

"Yes, partly," said Mrs. Merrill, rousing herself for the trial; "I have
never yet seen a newspaper article which was wholly true."

"That is because newspapers are not edited by women," observed Miss
Lucretia. "What I wish you to tell me, Mrs. Merrill, is this: how much of
that article is true, and how much of it is false?"

"Really, Miss Penniman," replied Mrs. Merrill, with spirit, "I don't see
why you should expect me to know."

"A woman should take an intelligent interest in her husband's affairs,
Mrs. Merrill. I have long advocated it as an entering wedge."

"An entering wedge!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill, who had never read a page of
the Woman's Hour.

"Yes. Your husband is the president of a railroad, I believe, which is
largely in that state. I should like to ask him whether these statements
are true in the main. Whether this Jethro Bass is the kind of man they
declare him to be."

Mrs. Merrill was in a worse quandary than ever. Her own spirits were none
too good, and Miss Lucretia's eye, in its search for truth, seemed to
pierce into her very soul. There was no evading that eye. But Mrs.
Merrill did what few people would have had the courage or good sense to
do.

"That is a political article, Miss Penniman," she said, "inspired by a
bitter enemy of Jethro Bass, Mr, Worthington, who has bought the
newspaper from which it was copied. For that reason, I was right in
saying that it is partly true. You nor I, Miss Penniman, must not be the
judges of any man or woman, for we know nothing of their problems or
temptations. God will judge them. We can only say that they have acted
rightly or wrongly according to the light that is in us. You will find it
difficult to get a judgment of Jethro Bass that is not a partisan
judgment, and yet I believe that that article is in the main a history of
the life of Jethro Bass. A partisan history, but still a history. He has
unquestionably committed many of the acts of which he is accused."

Here was talk to make the author of the "Hymn to Coniston" sit up, if she
hadn't been sitting up already.

"And don't you condemn him for those acts?" she gasped.

"Ah," said Mrs. Merrill, thinking of her own husband. Yesterday she would
certainly have condemned. Jethro Bass. But now! "I do not condemn
anybody, Miss Penniman."

Miss Lucretia thou