“Now, darlin’—­” began Mrs. Dawson, but Sally checked her.

“Don’t talk to me any more, mother,” she said, impatiently.  “I want to be quiet and think—­oh, my God, have mercy on me!”

Mrs. Dawson said nothing more, and with a sinking heart she saw the stricken child of her breast walk on into her room and close the door.

“Whar’s she been?” asked Mrs. Slogan, aggressively.

“She went to git out o’ re’ch o’ yore tongue,” said the widow, desperately.

To this apt retort Mrs. Slogan could not reply, but it evoked an amused laugh from her appreciative husband.

“Well, Sally didn’t shorely try to do that afoot, did she?” he gurgled.  “Looks like she’d ‘a’ tuck a train ef sech was her intention.”

Mrs. Dawson passed into the house and through the dining-room into her own small apartment and closed the door.  She lighted a tallow-dip and placed it on the old-fashioned bureau, from which the mahogany veneering had been peeling for years.  Her coarse shoes rang harshly on the smooth, bare floor.  She sank into a stiff, hand-made chair and sat staring into vacancy.  The bend of her back had never been more pronounced.

“The idee,” she muttered, “o’ my goin’ over my trouble as ef that amounted to a hill o’ beans ur would be a bit o’ comfort!  My God, ef some’n’ ain’t done to relieve Sally I’ll go stark crazy, an’—­an’—­I could kill ’im in cold blood, freely, so I could.  Oh, my pore, helpless baby! it seems like she never did have any rail friend but me.”

She rose and crept to the window, parted the calico curtains, and peered across the passage at her daughter’s door.  There was a narrow pencil of light beneath it.  “She’s readin’ his letters over,” said the old woman, “ur mebby she’s prayin’.  That’s railly what I ort to be a-doin’ instead o’ standin’ heer tryin’ to work out what’s impossible fer any mortal.  I reckon ef a body jest would have enough faith—­but I did have faith till—­till it quit doin’ me a particle o’ good.  Yes, I ort to be a-prayin’, and I’ll do it—­funny I never thought o’ that sooner.  Ef God fetched a rain, like they claim he did t’other day, shorely he’ll do a little some’n’ in a case like this un.”

She blew out the tallow-dip and knelt down in the darkness, and interlaced her bony fingers.

“Lord God Almighty, King of Hosts—­my Blessed Redeemer,” she began, “you know how I have suffered an’ why I never could put no grave-rock over my husband’s remains; you know how I have writhed an’ twisted under that scourge, but I kin bear that now, an’ more an’ more of it, but I jest cayn’t have my pore little baby go through the same, an’ wuss.  It don’t look like it’s fair—­no way a body kin look at it, for shorely one affliction of that sort in a family is enough, in all reason.  I stood mine, bein’ a ol’ woman, but Sally, she’ll jest pine away an’ die, fer she had all her heart set on that one man.  Oh, God