He stood like an avenging spirit, pointing towards the door, and the people who had sat there breathless through it all rose quietly and slipped out. Simpson joined them and melted into the crowd. They were awed and hushed.
Only Mrs. Hodges, white as death, and her husband, bowed with grief, remained. A silent party, they walked home together. Not until they were in the house did the woman break down, and then she burst into a storm of passionate weeping as if the pent-up tears of all her stoical life were flowing at once.
"Oh, Fred, Fred," she cried between her sobs, "I see it all now. I was wrong. I
was wrong. But I did it all fur the best. The Lord knows I did it fur the best."
"I know you did, Aunt Hester, but I wish you could have seen sooner, before the bitterness of death had come into my life." He felt strangely hard and cold. Her grief did not affect him then.
"Don't take on so, Hester," said the old man, but the woman continued to rock herself to and fro and moan, "I did it fur the best, I did it fur the best." The old man took her in his arms, and after a while she grew more calm, only her sobs breaking the silence.
"I shall go away to-morrow," said Brent. "I am going out into the world for myself. I 've been a disgrace to every one connected with me."
"Don't say that about yoreself, Fred; I ain't a-goin' to hear it," said Eliphalet. "You 've jest acted as any right-thinkin' man would 'a' acted. It would n't 'a' been right fur you to 'a' struck Brother Simpson, but I 'm nearer his age, an' my hands itched to git a hold o' him." The old man looked menacing, and his fist involuntarily clenched.
"'Liphalet," said his wife, "I 've been a-meddlin' with the business o' Providence,
an' I 've got my jest desserts. I thought I knowed jest what He wanted me to do, an' I was more ignorant than a child. Furgive me ef you kin, Fred, my boy. I was tryin' to make a good man o' you."