"Alfaretta," he said, with solemn slowness, "you'd better get your bunnet and go home. I'll see Mr. Ward about this; his wife's done harm enough. You've got to leave her,—I mean it. I won't see her send my child to hell before my very eyes."
"Oh, pa," Alfaretta entreated, choking and sobbing, and brushing her tears away with the back of her hand, "don't,—don't say nothin' to Mr. Ward, nor take me away. 'Twasn't her made me say those things; it was just my own self. Don't take me away."
"Did she ever say anything to you about the Lord not sendin' people to hell?" asked her father.
"Oh," said Alfaretta, growing more and more frightened, "'tain't what she talks about; it's her bein' so good, an'"—
"Did she ever," interrupted the elder, with slow emphasis, standing over her, and shaking his stubby forefinger at her,—"did she ever say the Lord didn't send Tom Davis to hell, to you?"
Alfaretta cowered in her chair, and Thaddeus began to whimper for sympathy. "I don't know," she answered desperately,—"I don't know anything, except she's good."
"Listen to me," said Mr. Dean, in his harsh, monotonous voice: "did Mrs. Ward ever say anything to you about hell, or the Lord's not sendin' people there? Answer me that."
Then the loving little servant-maid, truthful as the blood of Scotch ancestors and a Presbyterian training could make her, faced what she knew would bring remorse, and, for all she could tell, unpardonable sin upon her soul, and said boldly, "No, she never did. She never said one single blessed word to me about hell."
The wind seemed suddenly to leave the elder's sails, but the collapse was only for a moment; even Alfaretta's offering of her first lie upon the altar of her devotion to her mistress was not to save her.
"Well," he said, opening his mouth slowly and looking about with great dignity, "if she hasn't said it to you, she has to other people, I'll be bound. Fer she said it to Mrs. Davis, and"—the elder inflated his chest, and held his head high—"and me. It is my duty as elder to take notice of it, fer her own soul's sake, and to open her husband's eyes, if he's been too blind to see it. Yes, the Session should deal with her. Prayers ain't no good fer such as her," he said, becoming excited. "Ain't she heard my prayers most all winter, till she give up comin' to prayer-meetin', preferrin' to stay outside,