“Well, what is it, Marthy?” interposed Mrs. Bartlett.  “Anna’ll be down in a minute.”

“Well, you know, I have been sewin’ down to Warren Center this last week, and Maria Thomson, from Belden, was visiting there, and naturally we all got to talking ’bout folks up this way, and that girl Anna Moore’s name was mentioned, and I’m blest if Maria Thomson didn’t recognize her from my description.

“I was telling them ’bout the way she came here last June, pale as a ghost, and how she said her mother had just died and she’d been sick, and they knew right off who she was.”

Marthy loved few things as she did an interested audience.  It was her meat and drink.

“Well, she didn’t call herself Moore in Belden, though that was her mother’s name—­she called herself Lennox,” Marthy grinned.  “She was one of those married ladies who forgot their wedding rings.”

The Squire knit his brows and his jaws came together with a snap; there were tears in Mrs. Bartlett’s eyes.  The gossip looked from one to the other to see the impression her words were making.

It spurred her on to new efforts.  She positively rolled the words about in delight before she could utter them.

“Well, the girl’s mother, who had been looking worried out of her skin, took sick and died all of a sudden, and the girl took sick herself very soon afterwards—­and what do you think?  A girl baby was born to Mrs. Lennox, but her husband never came near her.  Fortunately, the baby did not live to embarrass her.  It died, and she packed up and left Belden.  That’s when she came here.

“And now,” continued the village inquisitor, summing up her terrible evidence, “what are we to think of a girl called Miss Moore in one town and Mrs. Lennox in the other, with no sign of a wedding ring and no sign of a husband?  And what are we going to think of that baby?  It seems to me scandalous.”  And she leaned back in her chair and rocked furiously.

[Illustration:  Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore’s past life.]

The Squire brought his hand down or the table with terrible force, his pleasant face, was distorted with rage and indignation.

“Just what I always said would come of taking in strange creatures that we knew nothing about.  Do you think that I will have a creature like that in my house with my wife and my niece, polluting them with her very presence?—­out she goes this minute!”

He strode over to the door through which Anna had passed a few moments before, he flung it open and was about to call when he felt his wife cling frantically to his arm.

“Father, don’t do anything in anger that you’ll repent of later.  How do you know this is true?  Look how well the girl has acted since she has been here”—­and in a lower voice, “you know that Marthy’s given to talking.”

The hand on the knob relaxed, a kindly light replaced the anger in his eyes.