Old Luke waited again, with sharp eyes on the pantry.  He could see therein a fold of Madelon’s indigo-blue petticoat, and could hear the click of a spoon against a dish; that was all.

Old Luke tried his last prod of aggravation.  “Folks air sayin’ down to the store that mebbe there was some truth, arter all, in what you said ‘bout the stabbin’, an’ mebbe that’s the reason Lot is a puttin’ off the weddin’,” piped old Luke.  He chuckled slyly to himself, but sobered suddenly, and cowered in his chair before Madelon.

She came out of the pantry with a rush, and stood before him, her eyes blazing.  “There was truth in what I said, after all!” she cried.  “The truth’s the truth, whether there’s folks to believe it or not, and I spoke it, and you can tell them so at the store.”

Old Luke shrank before her.  His old body seemed to cease to shape his clothes.  He looked up at her with scared eyes.

“And the reason I have told for the wedding being postponed is the truth, too,” continued Madelon.  “I did stab Lot Gordon, and he knows I did, though he won’t own it, and he’s bound to stab me back my whole life.  And we shall be married in a month fast enough—­you needn’t worry, Uncle Luke Basset.”

Madelon stood over the old man a minute, quivering with impatience and utterly reckless anger and scorn, and he shrank before her with scared eyes, and yet a lurking of his malicious grin about his mouth.  Then she made a contemptuous gesture, as if she would brush him out of her consciousness altogether, and went away out of the room without another word, and left him alone.

He turned his head slowly and looked cautiously around after the door was closed.  He heard Madelon’s quick tread up the stairs.  “Gorry!” muttered old Luke under his breath, and scowled reflectively over his foxy eyes.  Quite convinced in his own mind was old Luke Basset that his grandniece had spoken the truth, and had wounded Lot Gordon almost to death, and quite resolute was he also that he would, since she was his own kin, contend against the carping tongues of the village gossips with all the cunning in him.

Old Luke waited for some time.  Then he got up stiffly and shuffled out on his tottering legs, scraping his feet for purchase on the floor, like some old claw-footed animal.

Out in the entry he paused a moment, with his head cocked shrewdly and warily towards the stairs.  “Hey!” he called, but got no response.  He opened the outer door, and, all ready to be gone should his niece appear, he called shrilly up the stairs, “Hey, Mad’lon—­forgot to tell ye.  Mis’ Beers she said she see a bandbox ’mongst them things that come for the parson’s gal; said ’twas most big ’nough to hold the bride, and she guessed ’twas the weddin’-bunnit.”

Not a sound from above heard old Luke, and presently he gave it up and went out and down the road to the village, with occasional glances of a crafty old eye over his shoulder at Madelon’s chamber window.  Madelon had heard every word.  She was folding up her own wedding-silk and putting it away in the cedar chest until she should want it.  She put away her wedding-bonnet also, with its cream-colored plumes and its linings and strings of yellow satin, in the bandbox.