After a few days, I noticed that more of the brandy seemed to disappear each day than two or even three doses in the night could explain. It was a tall bottle of Cognac, the dose was less than an inch in a wine glass taken not more than twice each day, and yet in under a week the bottle was empty. The fierce teetotalism of the later-nineteenth-century Americanized Protestantism was unknown among the Brethren, who followed more faithfully the old Puritan tradition and deemed a bottle of liquor a good thing if used and not abused. But though drink had never loomed large in my imagination, I associated it vaguely with the snares of this world. Between Maud the worldly one with her unfamiliar female beauty (snare of snares) and the vanishing brandy the connection was so obvious that I need not have felt so pleased with myself as I did when I first divined it. It was clear as noonday. Maud was the thief. She had access to the cupboard at all hours, she was led into temptation, and had fallen. When I stared at her she would turn a little pale.
Aunt Jael was not yet aware of the theft. Clearly she was in her dotage, as the Cognac cost six shillings a bottle. Was it my duty, my duty before the Lord, to speak out? I inclined to think so. Theft was theft, and theft was sin, and sin should always be exposed for righteousness' sake and the sinner's too. On the other hand, a voice inside me told me that it would be mean and cowardly to sneak on Maud. The feeling of pleasure that Aunt Jael was being thieved from also urged silence. If both these notions weighed against my exposing Maud, yet one seemed in a sense to balance the other in my conscience, for I tried to justify my delight in seeing Aunt Jael robbed by pretending to myself that the generous impulse of shielding Maud was my real reason for keeping silence. As one bottle and then another disappeared with unmistakable speed, and the inroads on Aunt Jael's purse became more extensive and gratifying, my piece of self-deception began to wear hollow. Conscience pricked: "You know the real reason you are not telling. You know it is to spite Aunt Jael and not to shield Maud. You know."
One night I prayed for guidance. The answer was clear. My evil delight in Aunt Jael being robbed was a sin which I could only atone for by repentance and by stopping the robbery, while to avoid having Maud exposed and dismissed (this had been in one way an argument for and not against telling, because the inevitable dismissal of so helpful a girl would inconvenience Aunt Jael; though here again it cut both ways, as Grandmother and I would be inconvenienced and harried still more when she was gone) it was my duty to speak to her privately. Thus she would be spared, Aunt Jael protected, my sin atoned for, and justice done. I obeyed instantly, got out of bed, lit my candle and crept up to Maud's bedroom. I knocked timidly. There was a faint scuffling inside: she was getting out of bed. She opened the door a few inches and her face appeared. It was sheet white. She was trembling violently.
"I am sorry, Maud, to wake you up, but I had to." I spoke hurriedly, a bit shamefacedly. "If you won't do it again, I'll not tell."
"Miss—" she gasped.
"Don't worry," I said frightened by her frightened appearance, "I'll promise never to say a word."
"Thank you, Miss Mary, I'm sure," she said shakily, "but oh, oh, you did give me a start!"
As she spoke she came right out of the room in her nightgown, shut the door behind her, and stood up against me on the half-landing, still trembling.
"Why did you shut the door like that?" I asked. Her extreme fear puzzled me.