said, lurching forward, "let's find Saunders--coom
along--let's find Saunders."

Mary Anne guided him through the door, Bessie standing aside. As the
widow passed, she touched Bessie piteously.

"Oh, Bessie, yer _didn't_ do it--say yer didn't!"

Bessie looked at her dry-eyed and contemptuous. Something in the
speaker's emotion seemed to madden her.

"Don't yer be a fool, Mary Anne--that's all!" she said scornfully, and
Mary Anne fled from her.

When the door had closed upon them Bessie came up to the fire, her
teeth chattering. She sank down in front of it, spreading out her
hands. The children silently crowded up to her; first she pushed them
away, then she caught at the child nearest to her, pressed its fair
head against her, then again roughly put it aside. She was accustomed
to chatter with them, scold them and slap them; but to-night they were
uneasily dumb. They looked at her with round eyes; and at last their
looks annoyed her. She told them to go to bed, and they slunk away,
gaping at the open box on the stairs, and huddling together overhead,
all on one bed, in the bitter cold, to whisper to each other. Isaac
was a stern parent; Bessie a capricious one; and the children, though
they could be riotous enough by themselves, were nervous and easily
cowed at home.

Bessie, left alone, sat silently over the fire, her thin lips
tight-set. She would deny everything--_everything_. Let them find
out what they could. Who could prove what was in John's box when he
left it? Who could prove she hadn't got those half-crowns in change
somewhere?

The reflection of the day had only filled her with a passionate and
fierce regret. _Why_ had she not followed her first impulse and thrown
it all on Timothy?--told the story to Isaac while she was still
bleeding from his son's violence? It had been her only chance, and out
of pure stupidness she had lost it. To have grasped it might at least
have made him take her part, if it had forced him to give up Timothy.
And who would have listened to Timothy's tales?

She sickened at the thought of her own folly, beating her knee with her
clenched fist. For, to tell the tale now would only be to make her
doubly vile in Isaac's eyes. He would not believe her--no one would
believe her. What motive could she plead for her twenty-four hours of
silence, she knowing that John was coming back immediately? Isaac
would only hate her for throwing it on Timothy.

Then ag