Somehow this seemed to Carmel a statement of authority. It established the fact. Sheriff Churchill would never return, and his wife knew it. Something had informed her past doubting. It gave Carmel a strange, uncanny sensation, and she sat silent, chilled. Then an emotion moved in her, swelled, and lifted itself into her throat. It was something more than mere anger, it was righteous wrath.
“Mrs. Churchill,” she said, “if this is true—the thing you believe—then there are men in Gibeon who are not fit to walk the earth. There is a thing here which must be crushed—unearthed and crushed.”
“If it is God’s will.”
“It must be God’s will. And if I can help—if I can do one single small thing to help——”
“Mebby,” said Mrs. Churchill, solemnly, “He has marked you out and set you apart as His instrument.”
“I want to think. I want to consider.” Carmel got to her feet. “I—— Oh, this is a wicked, cruel, cruel thing!...”
She omitted, in her emotion, any word of parting, and walked from the house, eyes shining, lips compressed grimly. In her ears a phrase repeated itself again and again—“Mebby He has set you apart as His instrument....”
On the Square she met Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, who first peered at her through his great beetle glasses and then confronted her.
“May I ask,” he said, brusquely, “what decision you have reached concerning my letter?”
“I am going to print it,” she said.