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"She--_she_ set you on to ask me that?" She caught me by the coat and hissed out: "Come back from the door--don't let her see." Then she lifted up her fist, with the mint tightly clutched in it, and shook it at the warm patch of Sheba buildings across the valley.

"May God burn her bones, as He has smitten her body barren!"

"What do you know of this?" she cried, turning upon me again.

"I know nothing. That I have offered you some insult is clear: but--"

"Nay, you don't know--you don't know. No man would be such a hound. You don't know; but, by the Lord, you shall hear, here where you'm standin', an' shall jedge betwix' me an' that pale 'ooman up yonder. Stand there an' list to me.

"He was my lover more'n five-an'-thirty years agone. Who? That 'ooman's wedded man, Seth Bolverson. We warn't married"--this with a short laugh. "Wife or less than wife, he found me to his mind. She--she that egged you on to come an' flout me--was a pale-haired girl o' seventeen or so i' those times--a church-goin' mincin' strip of a girl--the