“I don’t see how that lets me out of lookin’ for them,” said Cousin Tryphena.

“Well, at least,” I urged, “don’t be in such a hurry about it.  Take time to think it over!  Wait till—­”

“Wait!” cried Cousin Tryphena.  “Why, another one may be jumpin’ in the river this minute!  If I’d ha’ had the money, I’d ha’ gone on the noon train!”

At this point, the man from Putnam’s came with a team from our livery to carry away the Sheraton sideboard.  Cousin Tryphena bore herself like a martyr at the stake, watching, with dry eyes, the departure of her one certificate to dear gentility and receiving with proud indifference the crisp bills of a denomination most of us had never seen before.

“You won’t need all that just to go down to the city,” I remonstrated.

She stopped watching the men load her shining old treasure into the wagon and turned her anguished eyes to me.  “They’ll likely be needing clothes and things.”

I gave up.  She had indeed thought it all out.

It was time for us to go home to prepare our several suppers and we went our different ways, shaking our heads over Tryphena’s queerness.  I stopped a moment before the cobbler’s open door, watched him briskly sewing a broken halter and telling a folk-tale to some children by his knee.  When he finished, I said with some acerbity, “Well, Jombatiste, I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve done to poor old Miss Tryphena ... spoiling the rest of her life for her!”

“Such a life, Madame,” said Jombatiste dryly, “ought to be spoiled, the sooner the better.”

“She’s going to start for the city to-morrow,” I said, supposing of course that he had heard the news.

Jombatiste looked up very quickly.  “For what goes she to the city?”

“Why ... she’s gone daft over those bogie-stories of yours ... she’s looked the list over and picked out the survivors, the widow of the man who died of tuberculosis, and so on, and she’s going to bring them back here to share her luxurious life.”

Jombatiste bounded into the air as if a bomb had exploded under him, scattering his tools and the children, rushing past me out of the house and toward Cousin Tryphena’s. ...  As he ran, he did what I have never seen anyone do, out of a book; he tore at his bushy hair and scattered handfuls in the air.  It seemed to me that some sudden madness had struck our dull little village, and I hastened after him to protect Cousin Tryphena.

She opened the door in answer to his battering knocks, frowned, and began to say something to him, but was fairly swept off her feet by the torrent of his reproaches....  “How dare you take the information I give you and use it to betray your fellow-man!  How do you dare stand there, so mealy-mouthed, and face me, when you are planning a cowardly attack on the liberty of your country!  You call yourself a nurse ... what would you think of a mother who hid