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Her story was not without its turn of pathos, for it was strange to think of her reading the holy books to him in the long, quiet evenings all the while he despised her for what she had been with a hatred that all the magnanimous examples of religion could not remove.

She was thinking over it all now, and so keenly, for he had just threatened to strike her again. Eighteen years had not removed from his mind the full and bitter realization of her sin.... They were both beginning to grow gray, and her living atonement for what she had been, her son John who was going on for the Church, was in his twentieth year. Would her husband forgive her when he saw John in the garb of a priest? She wondered and wondered.

So deep was she in this thought that she did not notice the entrance of old Marse Prendergast, who lived in a cabin just across the road. Marse was a superannuated shuiler and a terror in the valley. The tears had been summoned to her eyes by the still unchanging quality of Ned's tone. They were at once detected by the old woman.