I had it in me—though I had reason enough to despise the little man—to pity Hazen Kinch.
"He coughed," said the woman. "I knew it was croup. You know I asked you to get the medicine—ipecac. You said no matter—no need—and you had gone."
She looked out of the window.
"I went for help—to Annie Marshey. Her babies had had it. Her husband was going to town and she said he would get the medicine for me. She did not tell him it was for me. He would not have done it for you. He did not know. So I gave her a dollar to give him—to bring it out to me.
"He came home in the snow last night. Baby was bad by that time, so I was watching for Doan. I stopped him in the road and I asked for the medicine. When he understood he told me. He had not brought it."
The woman was speaking dully, without emotion.
"It would have been in time, even then," she said. "But after a while, after that, baby died."
I understood in that moment the working of the mills. And when I looked at Hazen Kinch I saw that he, too, was beginning to understand. There is a just mercilessness in an aroused God. Hazen Kinch was driven to questions.
"Why—didn't Marshey fetch it?" he asked.
She said slowly: "They would not trust him—at the store."