nough you'd find it. And
some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or
other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had
his secret sins and open faults. And he said sin was jest another name
for ignorance, and that Christ knew this when he prayed on the cross,
'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He said
everybody would do right, if they knew what was right to do, and that
the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in
other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the
clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall
have put on immortality.

"Child, that sermon's come home to me many a time when I've caught
myself weighin' people in the balance and findin' 'em wantin'. That's
what I'd been doin' all them years with pore Harvey. I'd seen things
every once in a while that let in a little light on his life and
Mary's, but the old cabin made it all plain as day, and it seemed like
every piece o' rubbish in it rose up in judgment against me. I never
felt like cryin' at Harvey's funeral, but when I stood there peerin'
around, the tears burnt my eyes, and I says to myself, 'Clay and gold!
Clay and gold!'

"The same thought must 'a' struck Mary at the same minute it did me,
for she fell on her knees moanin' and wringin' her hands and cryin':

"'God forgive me! God forgive me! I see it all now. He couldn't help
it, and I've been a hard woman, and God'll judge me as I judged
Harvey.'

"The look in her eyes and the sound of her voice skeered me, and I saw
that the quicker I got her out o' the old cabin the better. I put my
hand on her shoulder, and says I, 'Hush, Mary. Get up and come back to
the house; but don't let the children hear you takin' on so. You might
skeer little Harvey.'

"She stopped a minute and stared at me, and then she caught hold o' my
hand, and says she: 'No! no! the children mustn't ever know anything
about it, and nobody must ever see the inside o' that awful place.
Come, quick!' says she; and she got up from her knees and pulled me
outside of the door and locked it and dropped the key in her apron
pocket.

"Little Harvey come runnin' up to her, and I was in hopes the sight of
the child would bring her to herself, but she walked on as if she
hadn't seen him; and as soon as she got up-stairs she fell down in a
heap on the floor and went to wringin' her hands and beatin' her
breast