"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 sort you men-folk bow the knee to for saints. Her
father owned Sheba Farm, an' she look'd across on my man, an' had envy
on 'en, an' set her eyes to draw 'en. Oh, a saint she was! An' he, the
poor shammick, went. 'Twas a good girl, you understand, that wished
for to marry an' reform 'en. She had money, too. _I_? I'd ha' poured
out my blood for 'en: that's all I cud do. So he went.
"As the place shines this day, it shone then.
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