But Deborah quite ignored her.  She kept her eyes fixed upon Cephas.  “What has my son done?” she demanded again.  “If he’s done anything wrong I want to know it.  I ain’t afraid to deal with him.  You ordered him out of your house, and he didn’t come home at all last night.  I don’t know where he was.  He won’t speak a word this mornin’ to tell me.  I’ve been out in the field where he’s to work ploughin’, and I tried to make him tell me, but he wouldn’t say a word.  I sat up and waited all night, but he didn’t come home.  Now I want to know where he was, and what he’s done, and why you ordered him out of the house.  If he’s been swearin’, or takin’ anything that didn’t belong to him, or drinkin’, I want to know it, so I can deal with him as his mother had ought to deal.”

“He hasn’t been doing anything wrong!” Charlotte cried out again; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself talking so about him, when you’re his mother!”

Deborah Thayer never glanced at Charlotte.  She kept her eyes fixed upon Cephas.  “What has he done?” she repeated.

“I guess he didn’t do much of anything,” Mrs. Barnard murmured, feebly; but Deborah did not seem to hear her.

Cephas opened his mouth as if perforce.  “Well,” he said, slowly, “we got to talkin’—­”

“Talkin’ about what?”

“About the ‘lection.  I think, accordin’ to my reasonin’, that what we eat had a good deal to do with it.”

“What?”

“I think if you’d kept your family on less meat, and given ’em more garden-stuff to eat Barney wouldn’t have been so up an’ comin’.  It’s what he’s eat that’s made him what he is.”

Deborah stared at Cephas in stern amazement.  “You’re tryin’ to make out, as near as I can tell,” said she, “that whatever my son has done wrong is due to what he’s eat, and not to original sin.  I knew you had queer ideas, Cephas Barnard, but I didn’t know you wa’n’t sound in your faith.  What I want to know is, what has he done?”

Suddenly Charlotte sprang up, and pushed herself in between her father and Mrs. Thayer; she confronted Deborah, and compelled her to look at her.

“I’ll tell you what he’s done,” she said, fiercely.  “I know what he’s done; you listen to me.  He has done nothing—­nothing that you’ve got to deal with him for.  You needn’t feel obliged to deal with him.  He and father got into a talk over the ’lection, and they had words about it.  He didn’t talk any worse than father, not a mite.  Father started it, anyway, and he knew better; he knew just how set Barney was on his own side, and how set he was on his; he wanted to pick a quarrel.”

“Charlotte!” shouted Cephas.

“You keep still, father,” returned Charlotte, with steady fierceness.  “I’ve never set myself up against you in my whole life before; but now I’m going to, because it’s just and right.  Father wanted to pick a quarrel,” she repeated, turning to Deborah; “he’s been kind of grouty to Barney for some time.  I don’t know why; he took a notion to, I suppose.  When they got to having words about the ’lection, father begun it.  I heard him.  Barney answered back, and I didn’t blame him; I would, in his place.  Then father ordered him out of the house, and he went.  I don’t see what else he could do.  And I don’t blame him because he didn’t go home if he didn’t feel like it.”