Baird thought of Judith and how he had bent to her hand. But he had learned a surprising thing. "You don't tell me that old Mr. Penniman was in the house all the time I was there?" he exclaimed. "Why, I pounded the door and shouted."
"Sure he was there—up to his room in the front. He's fearful deaf an' he were asleep. He never heared you. I forgot to tell you, when we were plannin' quick of how to keep from everybody's knowin' that Ann was with Garvin. All my mind was on gettin' the doctor to her an' keepin' Ann's name from bein' mixed up in what's happened, an' so was yours."
"Will Miss Penniman be able to carry it through?" Baird asked anxiously.
"She will! I've done talked to her."
"And Ann?"
"Ann's too sick to talk—that's her answer," Ben returned with decision. "I tol' you I'd find the right thing to say." He pointed: "You see that there hole, where fodder is throwed down to the cows? Ann fell through there—it's a consid'able fall—more'n fifteen feet an' it won't be the first case of the kind the doctor has had to do with. I say that I foun' Ann down there, onconscious, an' any that doubts my word can come to me! I ain't never judged a lie a lie if it were tol' to help a woman—it's about the only chanst a man has to make up to his ma fo' men's havin' fastened the story of Eve to her."
In spite of his anxiety, Baird smiled. He liked Ben, and for much the same reasons as he had liked Edward Westmore; Ben Brokaw was every whit as true a gentleman. Baird thought of Edward's gentleness and consideration to women. "Ben?" he asked abruptly. "Why did Edward kill himself? Ann loved him, and you say he loved her—why did he hurt her like that? There appears to be no doubt about it, for the doctor told me that the pistol was smoked and that the wound showed that it had been fired at close range. The reason Mr. Copeley gave me—that Edward had heart trouble—isn't sufficient reason to me. Why in the name of heaven did he do such a thing!"
Ben stopped his work. But he did not look at Baird; he looked out at the struggle between sun and mist. After a considerable pause, he said slowly, "It seems the cruelest thing in all this night's work, don't it?... I can't explain it.... The Ridge'll give its reasons, an' first among them, that there is knowed to be one Westmo' whose mind ain't right, an' that now the thing's showed itself in Edward.... It's all right your askin' me—I know you are considerin' Ann same as I am. You can ask me anything you like an' I'll answer to the best of my ability, but it's a thing I won't discuss with nobody else. I thought a heap of Edward—I don't want to talk about it. My biggest trouble now is Ann."
If Ben intended to divert Baird, he succeeded. Baird moved restlessly, then got up. "He's in there a long time!" he said through his teeth.
He went to the door and looked out at the misty morning. It had been a steady, deep-sinking rain, like the satisfying answer to a prayer, and now the sun was fighting the steaming moisture, trying to work its vivifying will upon the growing things; in an hour's time it would triumphantly climb the heavens.