“You know I wouldn’t dare open them if I wasn’t telling you the truth.  I can prove what I say.  I was coming from Reeds.  It was hot in the woods and I stopped at Carney’s as I passed for a drink.  Elvira’s bedridden old mother heard me, and she was so crazy for some one to talk with, I stepped in a minute.  I saw Robert come down the path.  Elvira saw him, too, so she ran out of the house to head him off.  It looked funny, and I just deliberately moved where I could see and hear.  He brought her his violin, and told her to get ready and meet him in the woods with it that night, and they would go to a dance.  She took it and hid it in the loft to the well-house and promised she’d go.”

“Are you done?” demanded Mrs. Comstock.

“No.  I am going to tell you the whole story.  You don’t spare Elnora anything.  I shan’t spare you.  I hadn’t been here that day, but I can tell you just how he was dressed, which way he went and every word they said, though they thought I was busy with her mother and wouldn’t notice them.  Put down your hoe, Kate.  I went to Elvira, told her what I knew and made her give me Comstock’s violin for Elnora over three years ago.  She’s been playing it ever since.  I won’t see her slighted and abused another day on account of a man who would have broken your heart if he had lived.  Six months more would have showed you what everybody else knew.  He was one of those men who couldn’t trust himself, and so no woman was safe with him.  Now, will you drop grieving over him, and do Elnora justice?”

Mrs. Comstock grasped the hoe tighter and turning she went down the walk, and started across the woods to the home of Elvira Carney.  With averted head she passed the pool, steadily pursuing her way.  Elvira Carney, hanging towels across the back fence, saw her coming and went toward the gate to meet her.  Twenty years she had dreaded that visit.  Since Margaret Sinton had compelled her to produce the violin she had hidden so long, because she was afraid to destroy it, she had come closer expectation than dread.  The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.  Mrs. Comstock’s face and hair were so white, that her dark eyes seemed burned into their setting.  Silently she stared at the woman before her a long time.

“I might have saved myself the trouble of coming,” she said at last, “I see you are guilty as sin!”

“What has Mag Sinton been telling you?” panted the miserable woman, gripping the fence.

“The truth!” answered Mrs. Comstock succinctly.  “Guilt is in every line of your face, in your eyes, all over your wretched body.  If I’d taken a good look at you any time in all these past years, no doubt I could have seen it just as plain as I can now.  No woman or man can do what you’ve done, and not get a mark set on them for every one to read.”

“Mercy!” gasped weak little Elvira Carney.  “Have mercy!”