“Mercy?” scoffed Mrs. Comstock.  “Mercy!  That’s a nice word from you!  How much mercy did you have on me?  Where’s the mercy that sent Comstock to the slime of the bottomless quagmire, and left me to see it, and then struggle on in agony all these years?  How about the mercy of letting me neglect my baby all the days of her life?  Mercy!  Do you really dare use the word to me?”

“If you knew what I’ve suffered!”

“Suffered?” jeered Mrs. Comstock.  “That’s interesting.  And pray, what have you suffered?”

“All the neighbours have suspected and been down on me.  I ain’t had a friend.  I’ve always felt guilty of his death!  I’ve seen him go down a thousand times, plain as ever you did.  Many’s the night I’ve stood on the other bank of that pool and listened to you, and I tried to throw myself in to keep from hearing you, but I didn’t dare.  I knew God would send me to burn forever, but I’d better done it; for now, He has set the burning on my body, and every hour it is slowly eating the life out of me.  The doctor says it’s a cancer——­”

Mrs. Comstock exhaled a long breath.  Her grip on the hoe relaxed and her stature lifted to towering height.

“I didn’t know, or care, when I came here, just what I did,” she said.  “But my way is beginning to clear.  If the guilt of your soul has come to a head, in a cancer on your body, it looks as if the Almighty didn’t need any of my help in meting out His punishments.  I really couldn’t fix up anything to come anywhere near that.  If you are going to burn until your life goes out with that sort of fire, you don’t owe me anything!”

“Oh, Katharine Comstock!” groaned Elvira Carney, clinging to the fence for support.

“Looks as if the Bible is right when it says, ’The wages of sin is death,’ doesn’t it?” asked Mrs. Comstock.  “Instead of doing a woman’s work in life, you chose the smile of invitation, and the dress of unearned cloth.  Now you tell me you are marked to burn to death with the unquenchable fire.  And him!  It was shorter with him, but let me tell you he got his share!  He left me with an untruth on his lips, for he told me he was going to take his violin to Onabasha for a new key, when he carried it to you.  Every vow of love and constancy he ever made me was a lie, after he touched your lips, so when he tried the wrong side of the quagmire, to hide from me the direction in which he was coming, it reached out for him, and it got him.  It didn’t hurry, either!  It sucked him down, slow and deliberate.”

“Mercy!” groaned Elvira Carney.  “Mercy!”

“I don’t know the word,” said Mrs. Comstock.  “You took all that out of me long ago.  The past twenty years haven’t been of the sort that taught mercy.  I’ve never had any on myself and none on my child.  Why in the name of justice, should I have mercy on you, or on him?  You were both older than I, both strong, sane people, you deliberately chose your course when you lured him, and he, when he was unfaithful to me.  When a Loose Man and a Light Woman face the end the Almighty ordained for them, why should they shout at me for mercy?  What did I have to do with it?”