"It might all be arranged so easily in another way," sighed the widow.

"It cannot be arranged in any other way--" he began.

"Mr. Holcroft," she cried, leaning suddenly forward with clasped hands
and speaking effusively, "you but now called me your good woman. Think
how much those words mean. Make them true, now that you've spoken
them. Then you won't be homeless and will never need a caretaker."

"Are you making me an offer of marriage?" he asked with lowering brow.

"Oh, no, indeed!" she simpered. "That wouldn't be becoming in me. I'm
only responding to your own words."

Rising, he said sternly, "No power on earth could induce me to marry
you, and that would be plain enough if you were in your right mind. I
shall not stand this foolishness another moment. You must go with me
at once to Lemuel Weeks'. If you will not, I'll have you taken to an
insane asylum."

"To an insane asylum! What for?" she half shrieked, springing to her
feet.

"You'll see," he replied, going down the steps. "Jump up, Jane! I
shall take the trunk to your cousin's. If you are so crazy as to stay
in a man's house when he don't want you and won't have you, you are fit
only for an asylum."

Mrs. Mumpson was sane enough to perceive that she was at the end of her
adhesive resources. In his possession of her trunk, the farmer also
had a strategic advantage which made it necessary for her to yield.
She did so, however, with very bad grace. When he drove up, she
bounced into the wagon as if made of India rubber, while Jane followed
slowly, with a look of sullen apathy. He touched his horses with the
whip into a smart trot, scarcely daring to believe in his good fortune.
The lane was rather steep and rough, and he soon had to pull up lest
the object of his unhappy solicitude should be jolted out of the
vehicle. This gave the widow her chance to open fire. "The end has not
come yet, Mr. Holcroft," she said vindictively. "You may think you are
going to have an easy triumph over a poor, friendless, unfortunate,
sensitive, afflicted woman and a fatherless child, but you shall soon
learn that there's a law in the land. You have addressed improper
words to me, you have threatened me, you have broken your agreement. I
have writings, I have a memory, I have language to plead the cause of
the widow and the fatherless. I have been wronged, outraged, trampled
upon, and then turned out of doors. The indignant world shall hear my
story, t