Mrs. Grayson's lips moved; she tried to speak, but in vain; the sudden blow had blanched her face and paralyzed her speech. It was pitiable to see her ineffectual effort to regain control of herself. At length she sank down on a shuck-bottom chair by the door of the tent.
"Yer's some smellin'-salts," said a woman standing by, and she thrust forward her leathery hand holding an uncorked bottle of ammonia.
"He didn't do it," murmured Mrs. Grayson, when she had revived a little. "Our Tommy wouldn't do sech a thing. Go up there,"—and she pointed to the pulpit,—"you go up there, Barb'ry, an' tell the folks 't our Tommy never done it."
"Come, mother; let's go home," said Barbara faintly, for all her energy had gone now.
"I'll go with you," said Mely.
But Mrs. Grayson did not wish to go; she was intent on staying in order to tell the folks that Tommy "never, never done sech a thing."
She yielded at length to the gentle compulsion of Barbara and Mely and the neighbors who gathered about, and got into the wagon. Mely, who knew every inch of the road, took the reins, and drove slowly toward the Grayson house, picking a way among the stumps, roots, and holes of the new road.