“N—no.”
“Where did he go?”
There was no way out of it. Jennie must tell what she had seen.
“O Father!” she cried, “he came back—and then—he went into the stable.”
“Did you see him come out?”
“No, oh, no! But I saw him ride out through the bars on Old Charlie, and away up the road. I did, I saw him. O Joe! Oh, dear me! Oh, I wish—I wish—I was dead!”
The little girl fell to wringing her hands and sobbing again with great violence, convinced that she had been the victim of unhappy circumstances, and that she had been a traitor to Joe, whom she loved dearly.
Mrs. Gaston, drawing the child to her, sat on the stair-landing and said nothing; but sorrow and sympathy, struggling for the mastery in her heart, sent the bitter tears afresh to her eyes.
Over the face of Joe’s father came a look that had not been there before.