Rachel Blodgett, who had been teetering with eagerness on her thin old ankles, interposing now and then sharp quavers of abortive speech, cut short Robinson’s last words with the impetuosity of her delivered torrent.  “I washed to-day,” said she.  “I didn’t wash yesterday because it wasn’t a good drying-day, and last week I had my clothes around three days in the tub, and I made up my mind I wouldn’t do it again.  So I washed to-day.

“I got my clothes all hung out before dinner.  I had an uncommon heavy wash to-day, an extra table-cloth—­Mr. Means tipped his coffee over yesterday morning—­and the sheets of the spare chamber bed were in, so I put up a little piece of line I had, between those two trees, beside my regular clothes-line.

“About an hour ago I thought to myself the clothes ought to be dry, and I’d just step out and look.  So I run out, and there were the clothes I’d hung on the little line—­some dish-towels, and two of my aprons, and one of Mr. Means’s shirts—­down on the ground in the dirt, and the line was gone.  Thinks I, ‘Where’s that line gone to?’

“I stood there gaping, I couldn’t make head or tail of it.  Then I see the little Crossman boy out in the yard, and I hollered to him—­’Willy,’ says I, ‘come here a minute.’

“He come running over, and I asked him if he’d seen anybody in our yard since noon.  He said he hadn’t seen anybody but Mr. Basset.  He saw him coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat.

“That put me on the track.  If I do say it of the dead, and one that’s gone to his account in an awful way, Mr. Basset had been over here time and time again, and helped himself.  I ain’t going to say he stole; he helped himself.  He helped himself to our kindling wood, and our hammer, and our spade, and our rake.  After the spade went, I made a notch on the rake-handle so I could tell it, and when that went, I slipped over to Mr. Basset’s one day when I knew he wasn’t there, and there was our rake in his shed.  I said nothing to nobody, but I just brought our rake home again, and I hid it where he didn’t find it again.  Mr. Means, though he’s a lawyer, looks out sharper for other folks’ belongings than he does for his own.  He’d never say anything; he went and bought another spade and hammer, and he’d bought another rake if I hadn’t got that.

“When that little Crossman boy said he’d seen Mr. Basset coming out of our yard tucking something under his coat, it put me right on the track, though I couldn’t think what he wanted with that little piece of rope.  I should have thought he wanted it to mend a harness with, but his old horse died last winter; folks said he didn’t have enough to eat, but I ain’t going to pass any judgment on that, and I knew he sold his old harness, because the man he sold it to had been to Mr. Means to get damages for being taken in.  The harness had broke, and his horse had run away, and the man declared that that harness had been glued together in places.