Elithe took his hand and said:
“I’ll come, yes,—and so will everybody, and I don’t believe they’ll do anything to you, either, when they know just how it happened. They’ll blame you for keeping still so long,—but giving yourself up voluntarily will wipe that out. I was very angry with you at first. I think you a hero now, so will Mr. Ralston, and he and his father will do everything to save you.”
She pressed his hand warmly, and then hurried home with the news, feeling herself grow stronger with every step and looking so bright and happy when she entered the house that her aunt noticed the change and asked what had happened.
“The man is found,—the man is found,” Elithe replied, curveting around the room and finally dropping into the two-step she had practiced with Paul on the causeway, and whistling an accompaniment.
“Be you crazy? What man is found?” Miss Hansford asked, divining the answer before it came.
“The man who shot Mr. Percy. It was not Paul. I was mistaken. It was Tom. He has told me all about it and is going to give himself up.”
Miss Hansford’s knees, which had played her false so many times of late, weakened as they had never done before, and, although she was sitting down, she straightened out in her chair until the Bible she was reading slipped from her lap to the floor, followed by her spectacles, while her hands followed them and hung beside her. There was a spasmodic movement of her lower jaw and a clicking sound of her teeth as she said: “Tell me what you mean?” Elithe told her all she had heard from Tom, whom Miss Hansford first called a scamp and a scoundrel who deserved hanging and ended by praising and pitying, saying, as Elithe had said, that the Ralstons would do everything to save him and most likely nothing would be done to punish him. The change in Miss Hansford after this was as rapid as it had been in Elithe and manifested itself in a peculiar way. Usually the most particular of housekeepers, she had, since Paul’s arrest, paid but little attention to anything beyond the necessary preparation of meals and clearing them away. Her autumnal house cleaning had been neglected. She didn’t care how much filth she wallowed in, feeling as she did, she said. Now, however, she woke as from a trance, and, declaring her house “dirty as the rot,” went to work with a will to renovate it. Before the sun was up next morning her mattresses and blankets and pillows were out in the November wind; much of her furniture was on the piazza; her carpets were on the line and grass ready to be whipped, and within an hour, with her sleeves rolled up and a towel on her head, she was making a raid on dust and spiders and flies, wondering she didn’t find more and urging on the two Portuguese men outside with the carpets, and the two Portuguese women inside with the cleaning, as they had never been urged before.
The next day was Sunday, and she went to church for almost the first time since Paul’s escape.
“Somebody is sure to ask me if I have any idea where Paul is. Of course I have, and with wrigglin’ and beatin’ round the bush I’ve told so many lies that I’m afraid I’ll never be forgiven, and I don’t want to see people,” she had said to Elithe as an excuse for staying at home.
Now she did not care and she held her head high as she entered the church, and her knees did not bend at all until she went down upon the floor with a silent prayer of fervent thanksgiving for what was coming to Paul and forgiveness for the sins she had committed in trying to shield him and keep his whereabouts a secret. She did not have to do this much longer, for the town was soon electrified by Paul’s walking boldly out before the public and surrendering himself to justice.