She stopped.

“Jest a minute,” said Scattergood.  “Never walk off with suthin’ on your mind.  Apt to give ye mental cramps.  What was that there tack hammer an excuse for comin’ here fer?”

“Is it true that he’s coming back, like the talk’s goin’ around?”

“I calc’late ye mean Mavin.  Mean Mavin Newton?”

“Yes,” she said, faintly.

“What if he did?” said Scattergood.

“I don’t know....  Oh, I don’t know.”

“Want he should come back?”

“He—­If he should come—­”

“Uh-huh!” said Scattergood.  “Calc’late I kin appreciate your feelin’s.  Treated you mighty bad, didn’t he?”

“He treated himself worse,” said Mattie, with a little awakening of sharpness.

“So he done.  So he done....  Um!...  Eight year he’s been gone, and you was twenty when he went, wa’n’t ye?  Twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Hain’t never had a feller since?”

She shook her head.  “I’m an old maid, Mr. Baines.”

“I’ve heard tell of older,” he said, dryly.  “Wisht you’d tell me why you let sich a scalawag up and ruin your life fer ye?”

“He wasn’t a scalawag—­till then.”

“You hain’t thinkin’ he was accused of suthin’ he didn’t do?”

“He told me he took the money.  He came to see me before he ran away.”

“Do tell!” This was news to Scattergood.  Neither he nor any other was aware that Mavin Newton had seen or been seen by a soul after the commission of his crime.

“He told me,” she repeated, “and he said good-by....  But he never told me why.  That’s what’s been hurtin’ me and troublin’ me all these years.  He didn’t tell me why he done it, and I hain’t ever been able to figger it out.”

“Um!... Why he done it?  Never occurred to me.”

“It never occurred to anybody.  All they saw was that he took their organ money and robbed the church.  But why did he do it?  Folks don’t do them things without reason, Mr. Baines.”

“He wouldn’t tell you?”

“I asked him—­and I asked him to take me along with him.  I’d ‘a’ gone gladly, and folks could ‘a’ thought what they liked.  But he wouldn’t tell, and he wouldn’t have me, and I hain’t heard a word from him from that day to this....  But I’ve thought and figgered and figgered and thought—­and I jest can’t see no reason at all.”

“Took it to run away with—­fer expenses,” said Scattergood.

“There wasn’t anything to run away from until after he took it.  I know.  Whatever ’twas, it come on him suddin.  The night before we was together—­and—­and he didn’t have nothin’ on his mind but plans for him and me ... and he was that happy, Mr. Baines!...  I wisht I could make out what turned a good man into a thief—­all in a minute, as you might say.  It’s suthin’, Mr. Baines, suthin’ out of the ordinary, and always I got a feelin’ like I got a right to know.”