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Presently the minister, Caleb Gale, and the other deacon came up the gallery stairs. Hetty sat stiffly erect. Caleb Gale went up to the sunflower quilt, slipped it aside, and looked in. He turned to Hetty with a frown. To-day his dignity was supported by important witnesses.”Did you bring that stove an’ bedstead here?”

Hetty nodded.

“What made you do such a thing?”

“What was I goin’ to do if I didn’t?How’s a woman as old as me goin’ to sleep in a pew, an’ go without a cup of tea?”

The men looked at each other. They withdrew to another corner of the gallery and conferred in low tones; then they went down-stairs and out of the church. Hetty smiled when she heard the door shut. When one is hard pressed, one, however simple, gets wisdom as to vantage-points. Hetty comprehended hers perfectly. She was the propounder of a problem; as long as it was unguessed, she was sure of her foothold as propounder. This little village in which she had lived all her life had removed the shelter from her head; she being penniless, it was beholden to provide her another; she asked it what. When the old woman with whom she had lived died, the town promptly seized the estate for taxes – none had been paid for years. Hetty had not laid up a cent; indeed, for the most of the time she had received no wages. There had been no money in the house; all she had gotten for her labor for a sickly, impecunious old woman was a frugal board. When the old woman died, Hetty gathered in the few household articles for which she had stipulated, and made no complaint. She walked out of the house when the new tenants came in; all she asked was, “What are you going to do with me?”This little settlement of narrow-minded, prosperous farmers, however hard a task charity might be to them, could not turn an old woman out into the fields and highways to seek for food as they would a Jersey cow. They had their Puritan consciences, and her note of distress would sound lounder in their ears than the Jersey’s bell echoing down the valley in the stillest night. But the question as to Hetty Fifield’s disposal was a hard one to answer. There was no almshouse in the village, and no private family was willing to take her in. Hetty was strong and capable; although she was old, she could well have paid for her food and shelter by her labor; but this could not secure her an entrance even among this hard-working and thrifty people, who would ordinarily grasp quickly enough at service without wage in dollars and cents. Hetty had somehow gotten for herself an unfortunate name in the village. She was held in the light of a long-thorned brier among the beanpoles, or a fierce little animal with claws and teeth bared. People were afraid to take her into their families; she had the reputation of always taking her own way, and never heeding the voice of authority.”I’d take her in an’ heve her give me a lift with the work,” said one sickly farmer’s wife; “but, near’s I can find out, I couldn’t never be sure that I’d get molasses in the beans, nor saleratus in my sour-milk cakes, if she took a notion not to put it in. I don’t dare to risk it.”

Stories were about concerning Hetty’s authority over the old woman with whom she had lived.”Old Mis’ Grout never dared to say her soul was her own,” people said. Then Hetty’s sharp, sarcastic sayings were repeated; the justice of them made them sting. People did not want a tongue like that in their homes.