"And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel no fear in the dead of the night,—that corpse before you, no fear?"
"Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm. Oh, he's a clever man!
What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Martha, with a horrid simplicity.
"You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have heard you say,—a sect not unfamiliar to me; a sect to which great crime is very rarely known?"
"Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be weel [whirlpool] deep!"
"You do not believe what they taught you?"
"I did when I was young and silly."
"And what disturbed your belief?"
"Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, was the first I ever kep' company with," answered Martha, without a change in her florid hue, which seemed fixed in her cheek, as the red in an autumn leaf. "After he had ruined me, as the girls say, he told me as how it was all sham!"
"You loved him, then?"
"The man was well enough, ma'am, and he behaved handsome and got me a husband. I've known better days."