A long time the two women sat together, the widow still shaken by gusts of weeping, yet listening hungrily to Helen's words, and sometimes even smiling through her tears. The hardship of loss to herself and her children was not even thought of; there was only intense relief from horrible fear; she did not even stop to pity Tom for the pain of death; coming out of that nightmare of hell, she could only rejoice.
The early sunset flashed a sudden ruddy light through the window in the front room, making a gleaming bar on the bare whitewashed wall, and startling Helen with the lateness of the hour.
"I must go now," she said, rising. "I will come again to-morrow."
Mrs. Davis rose, too, lifting her tear-stained face, with its trembling smile, towards her deliverer. "Won't you come in the other room a minute?" she said. "I want to show you the coffin. I got the best I could, but I didn't have no pride in it. It seems different now."
They went in together, Mrs. Davis crying quietly. Tom's face was hidden, and a fine instinct of possession, which came with the strange uplifting of the moment, made his wife shrink from uncovering it.
She stroked the varnished lid of the coffin, with her rough hands, as tenderly as though the poor bruised body within could feel her touch.
"How do you like it?" she asked anxiously. "I wanted to do what I could fer Tom. I got the best I could. Mr. Ward give me some money, and I spent it this way. I thought I wouldn't mind going hungry, afterwards. You don't suppose,"—this with a sudden fear, as one who dreads to fall asleep lest a terrible dream may return,—"you don't suppose I'll forget these things you've been tellin' me, and think that of Tom?"
"No," Helen answered, "not if you just say to yourself that I told you what Mr. Dean said was not true. Never mind if you cannot remember the reasons I have given you,—I'll tell them all to you again; just try and forget what the elder said."
"I will try," she said; and then wavering a little, "but the preacher, Mrs. Ward?"
"The preacher," Helen answered bravely, "will think this way, too, some day, I know." And then she made the same excuse for him which she had given Alfaretta, with the same pang of regret.