"No—Jem!" she panted. "No, not that, my dear—God forbid!"
He staggered back though she still clung to him.
"How," he faltered,—"how did you come here?"
"The Lord led me," she sobbed. "He put it into my heart and showed me the way, an' you had forgot the door, Jem—thank God!"
"You—saw—what I was going to do?"
"What you was goin' to do, but what you'll never do, Jem, an' me to live an' suffer when it's done—me as you've been so good an' such a comfort to."
In the dim light she knelt sobbing at his feet.
"Let me sit down," he said. "And sit down nigh me. I've summat to tell you."
But though he sank into the chair she would not get up, but kept her place in spite of him and went on.
"To-day there have been black tales told you?" he said.
"Yes," she cried, "but——"
"They're true," he said, "th' worst on 'em."
"No—no!"
He stopped her by going on monotonously as if she had not spoken.
"Think of the worst you've ever known—you've not known much—and then say to yourself, 'He's worse a hundred times'; think of the blackest you have ever known to be done, and then say to yourself, 'What he's done's blacker yet.' If any chap has told you I've stood at naught until there was next to naught I'd left undone, he spoke true. If there was any one told you I set th' decent ones by the ears and laughed 'em in the face, he spoke true. If any o' 'em said I was a dread and a byword, they spoke true, too. The night you came there
