"Do nothin', Mr. Gaither. You've done more 'n you can undo a'ready. You've took and give that poor boy over for to be persecuted, Mr. Gaither, and now the innocent suffers and the wicked goes scotch-free."
Bradley Gaither covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud.
"What have I done? What have I done?" he cried.
Miss Jane supported the girl in her strong arms with a grim display of affection, but her attitude towards Bradley Gaither was uncompromising.
"Don't alarm yourself, Mr. Gaither," she said; "this poor child'll come too, quick enough. Folks don't fling off the'r misery this easy!"
Rose revived after a while, but she seemed to have no desire to talk to her father. After a copious use of camphor, Miss Jane fixed Rose comfortably on the lounge, and the girl lay there and gazed at the ceiling, the picture of wide-eyed despair. Bradley Gaither paced the room like one distracted. His sighs were heart-rending. When Miss Jane succeeded in getting him out of the room, he paced up and down the entry, moving his lips and groaning as though in great mental agony. Failing to understand what emotions he was at the mercy of, Miss Jane failed to sympathise with him. To her mind his display of grief bore no sort of proportion to the cause, and she had a woman's contempt for any manifestation of weakness in man, even the weakness of grief.
"I'll pray to the Lord to forgive me!" he cried out piteously.
"That's right," exclaimed Miss Jane, in her decisive way. "But if the grace of pra'r was in the hinges of the knee, I know a heap of folks that'd be easy in the mind."
Every word she spoke cut like a knife, but not until long after did Miss Inchly realise the fact. When she did realise it, it is to be feared she hugged the remembrance of it to her bosom with a sort of grim thankfulness that Providence had so happily fashioned her words and directed her tongue.
As time passed on, the Pinetuckians became aware that a great change had come over both Bradley Gaither and his daughter. The father grew old before his time, and fell into a decline, as his neighbours expressed it. The daughter grew more beautiful, but it was beauty of a kind that belonged to devoutness; so that in contemplating it the minds of men were led in the direction of mercy and charity and all manner of good deeds.