“But I shall talk about it.  When Father came home that night he couldn’t talk of anything else.  He called it the prize puzzle of the century.  You had given him four hundred dollars of your own money and pretended it was his and that you had—­had stolen it, Jed.  He burst out laughing when he told me that and so did I. The idea of your stealing anything!  You!”

Jed smiled, feebly.

“’Twas silly enough, I give in,” he admitted.  “You see,” he added, in an apologetic drawl, “nine-tenths of this town think I’m a prize idiot and sometimes I feel it’s my duty to live up—­or down—­to my reputation.  This was one of the times, that’s all.  I’m awful glad Sam got his own money back, though.”

“The money didn’t amount to anything.  But what you did was the wonderful thing.  For now I understand why you did it.  You thought—­you thought Charlie had taken it to—­to pay that horrid man in Middleford.  That is what you thought and you—­”

Jed broke in.  “Don’t!  Don’t put me in mind of it, Maud,” he begged.  “I’m so ashamed I don’t know what to do.  You see—­you see, Charlie had said how much he needed about that much money and—­ and so, bein’ a—­a woodenhead, I naturally—­”

“Oh, don’t!  Please don’t!  It was wonderful of you, Jed.  You not only gave up your own money, but you were willing to sacrifice your good name; to have Father, your best friend, think you a thief.  And you did it all to save Charlie from exposure.  How could you, Jed?”

Jed didn’t answer.  He did not appear to have heard her.  He was gazing steadily out into the yard.

“How could you, Jed?” repeated Maud.  “It was wonderful!  I can’t understand.  I—­”

She stopped at the beginning of the sentence.  She was standing beside the little writing-table and the drawer was open.  She looked down and there, in that drawer, she saw the framed photograph of Ruth Armstrong.  She remembered that Jed had been sitting at that desk and gazing down into that drawer when she entered the room.  She looked at him now.  He was standing by the window peering out into the yard.  Ruth had come from the back door of the little Winslow house and was standing on the step looking up the road, evidently waiting for Barbara to come from school.  And Jed was watching her.  Maud saw the look upon his face—­and she understood.

A few moments later she and Ruth met.  Maud had tried to avoid that meeting by leaving Jed’s premises by the front door, the door of the outer shop.  But Ruth had walked to the gate to see if Babbie was coming and, as Maud emerged from the shop, the two women came face to face.  For an instant they did not speak.  Maud, excited and overwrought by her experience with the letter and her interview with Jed, was still struggling for self-control, and Ruth, knowing that the other must by this time have received that letter and learned her brother’s secret, was inclined to be coldly defiant.  She was the first to break the silence.  She said “Good afternoon” and passed on.  But Maud, after another instant of hesitation, turned back.