Page:A Girl of the Limberlost.djvu/252

234 a nice word from you! How much mercy did you have on me? Where's the mercy that sent Comstock to the slime of the bottomless quagmire, and left me to see it, and then struggle on in agony all these years? How about the mercy of letting me allow my baby to be neglected all the days of her life? Mercy! Do you really dare use the word to me?" "If you knew what I've suffered!" "Suffered?" jeered Mrs. Comstock. "That's interesting. And pray, what have you suffered?" "All the neighbours have suspected and been down on me. I ain't had a friend. I've always felt guilty of his death! I've seen him go down a thousand times, plain as ever you did. Many's the night I've stood on the other bank of that pool and listened to you, and I tried to throw myself in to keep from hearing you, but I didn't dare. I knew God would send me to burn forever, but I'd better done it; for now He has set the burning on my body, and every hour it is slowly eating the life out of me. The doctor says it's a cancer" Mrs. Comstock exhaled a long breath. Her grip on the hoe relaxed and her stature lifted to towering height. "I didn't know, or care, when I came here, just what I did," she said. "But my way is beginning to clear. If the guilt of your soul has come to a head, in a cancer on your body, it looks as if the Almighty didn't need any of my help in meting out His punishments. I really couldn't fix up anything to come anywhere near that. If you are