The muscles in Sam's jaws twitched visibly beneath his tense skin. As Martha looked at him, she seemed scarcely to recognize him for the man who was her husband. Suddenly, from out of the dim recesses of her memory, emerged a line she had heard quoted in some far-off, vague time and association, when she had not consciously taken note of it. "Beware the fury of a patient man!" Now she understood what the words meant.
"If my wife must know this disgraceful thing, it's I will tell her," he spoke so low, his words were barely audible, but Ma would have felt easier if he had thundered. "Now listen, you two, to what I say. Never for one second have I doubted my woman. Never would I. When I tell you, Martha, what these have been saying, I don't do so for you to deny it. You're my wife. I believe in you—and would, against heaven and—hell. It seems, you've been writing letters to some one, lately, which God knows you've the right to do it. But these two here must needs spy on you, and sneak about, stealing the stray bits of scribbling you thought you'd destroyed and thrown away. They gathered them up, and, when your back was turned, pieced them together, to send to me with an anonymous letter—only I suspicioned something was afoot, and watched, and to-day I caught them at it. My God! There ought to be a separate fire in hell as punishment for such damned muck-raking!"
"Sam!" entreated Martha.
"Suppose you have written Gilroy, who, none knows better than I, how once he wanted to marry you, and how you turned him down for me. Suppose you have written to Peter Gilroy, and Peter Gilroy has written to you——"
"I have, Sam, an'—he has," Martha confessed slowly.
"Surely you'd the right to do it, and I'd be the last to question you."
Martha gave him a long look.
"Did you say Ma an' Mrs. Peckett got a-holt o' my letters to Gilroy?"
Sam nodded.
"Did they give you the letters?"