“In prison! For what?” he demanded. “Who put them there?”
“Must I say it again? It was my own husband that did it, backed up, and led blind by that copper-headed cretur, Ja Boyce. I know as well as I live, that he’s at the bottom of it, though Smith sticks to him through thick and thin. As for that boy, he’s innocent as twenty lambs, every one of ’em with fleeces white as snow; but you can’t make Smith believe it, he’s that blinded.”
“Pray, Mrs. Smith, compose yourself, and tell us clearly what all this means? On what charge are these two persons in prison?” said Ross, who was the first to recover his presence of mind.
“Charges? Why, theft! burglary! receiving stolen property! Our store was robbed on the night we went to your sister’s party. And they are took up for doing it. I didn’t know it till just now. Oh, they were mighty sly, Kate Gorman and all, taking people up, and keeping me in the dark; but I’ve left ’em. Smith will find out what he’s done when I am gone, and his home is full of nothing but loneliness.”
“Where have they been taken to, Mrs. Smith?” inquired Ross.
“Where? The Tombs, to be sure. No other place was gloomy enough for them. Smith has gone down to appear. Yes, and a pretty appearance he’ll put in for himself. Oh, girls, it was not my fault!”
The poor woman clasped her hands, and seemed about to fall upon her knees before Eva, who flung both arms about her neck, and tenderly wiped her eyes, though her hands shook in doing it, and the dumb anguish in her face was pitiful to see.
“Whatever it is, we shall never blame you, Mrs. Smith,” gasped Ruth.
Mrs. Smith fell on her knees before the sick girl’s couch, and burst into a fresh paroxysm of tears.
“But you must blame him. Who can help it? To keep such things secret from the wife of his bosom, hard as a rock, too, against that poor honest, crusty, dear old woman. Oh, it’s too bad! too bad! But that he told me himself, I never would have believed it; but there he is, gone down to persecute like a heathen grind-stone.”