Jane was silent.
“Mebbe you’d like to know the condition,” sneered the old woman, addressing Jane.
She waited for a reply, but none came. Ellen looked baffled.
“You’d better accept the chance I give you to buy yourself off,” she said.
“That is my affair.”
“Do, Jane! Do promise,” begged Mary and Eliza. “Please do, for our sakes.”
“Very well,” Jane returned. “But I only do it to protect my sisters. What is the condition?”
With head thrown back she faced Ellen coldly.
“The condition is that you take that bag of gunpowder back home to your brother Martin 108 an’ tell him Ellen Webster sent it to him with her compliments. He can use it blastin’ out stones to fix up his stone wall.”
Then, with a taunting laugh, the woman turned and without more adieu disappeared in the direction of the Webster homestead, leaving a speechless trio of chagrined Howes behind her.