“It’s the truth,” she repeated.  “She and Nat are promised to each other.  Cap’n Eben, on his deathbed, asked Dr. Parker and me to be witnesses to the engagement.  Now you see why you mustn’t go nigh her again.”

He did not answer.  Instead, he stood silently staring.  She stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Set down, John,” she said.  “Set down and let me tell you about it.  Yes, yes, you must.  If I tell you, you’ll understand better.  There! there! don’t you interrupt me yet and don’t you look that way.  Do set down.”

She led him over to the rocking-chair and gently forced him into it.  He obeyed, although with no apparent realization of what he was doing.  Still with her hand on his shoulder she went on speaking.  She told him of her visit to the Hammond tavern, saying nothing of Mr. Pepper’s call nor of her own experience in the grove.  She told of Captain Eben’s seizure, of what the doctor said, and of the old Come-Outer’s return to consciousness.  Then she described the scene in the sick room and how Nat and Grace had plighted troth.  He listened, at first stunned and stolid, then with growing impatience.

“So you see,” she said.  “It’s settled; they’re engaged, and Dr. Parker will tell everybody of the engagement this very mornin’.  It wa’n’t any great surprise to me.  Those two have been brought up together; ’twas the natural thing that was almost bound to happen.  Eben’s heart was set on it for years.  And she’ll have a good husband, John, that I know.  And she’ll do her best to make him happy.  He’s a good man and—­”

The minister sprang to his feet.

“A good man!” he cried furiously.  “A good man!  One who will make use of a dying father to drive a girl into—­Stand aside, Mrs. Coffin!”

“John, you mustn’t speak that way of Nat Hammond.  He ain’t the kind to drive a girl against her will.  And Grace is not one to be driven.”

“Are you blind?  Can’t you see?  Why, only yesterday, she—­Do you think I shall permit such a wicked crime as that to—­”

“Ss-sh!  No, it ain’t wicked, it’s right.  Right and best for everybody, for her especial.  Yesterday she might have forgot for a minute.  But think, just think what would have happened if she cared for you.”

“But she does!  I know she does.  Mrs. Coffin, stand away from that door.”

“No, John; if you go out of that door now, to go to her, you’ll have to go by main strength.  You shan’t wreck yourself and that girl if I can help it.  Be a man.”

The pair looked at each other.  Keziah was determined, but so, evidently, was he.  She realized, with a sinking heart, that her words had made absolutely no impression.  He did not attempt to pass, but he slowly shook his head.

“Mrs. Coffin,” he said, “perhaps you believe you’re doing right.  I hope—­yes, I’ll give you credit for that belief.  But I know I am right and I shall go to her.  Such a—­a bargain as that you have just told me of is no more to be regarded than—­”