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He could only look at her. This sort of woman was entirely new to his experience.

“But I’ve got somethin’ else to say,” she continued, adjusting her feet more comfortably. “I ain’t goin’ to turn anybody out into the snow, such a night as this. You’re welcome to stay, but I want to know what brought ye here. I ain’t one o’ them that meddles an’ makes, an’ if you ‘ain’t done nothin’ out o’ the way, an’ I ain’t called on for a witness, you needn’t be afraid o’ my tellin’.”

“You will be called on!” he broke in, speaking from a desperation outside his own control. “It’s murder! I’ve killed a man!” He turned upon her with a savage challenge in the motion; but her face was set, placidly forward, and the growing dusk had veiled its meaning.

“Well!” she remarked, at length, “ain’t you ashamed to set there talkin’ about it! You must have brass enough to line a kittle! Why ‘ain’t you been, like a man, an’ gi’n yourself up, instid o’ livin’ here, turnin’ my kitchen upside down? Now you tell me all about it! It’ll do ye good.”

“I’m goin’,” said the man, breathing hard as he spoke, “I’m goin’ away from here tonight. They never’ll take me alive. It was this way. There was a man over where I lived that’s most drunk himself under ground, but he ain’t too fur gone to do mischief. He told a lie about me, an’ lost me my place in the shoe shop. Then one night, I met him goin’ home, an’ we had words. I struck him. He fell like an ox. I killed him. I didn’t go home no more. I didn’t even see my wife. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t be took there. So I run away. An’ when I got starved out, an’ my feet were most froze walkin’, I see this house, all shet up, an’ I come here.”

He paused; and the silence was broken only by the slow, cosey ticking of the liberated clock.

“Well!” said Mrs. Wadleigh, at last, in a ruminating tone. “Well! well! Be you a drinkin’ man?”

“I never was till I lost my job,” he answered, sullenly. “I had a little then. I had a little the night he sassed me.”

“Well! well!” said Mrs. Wadleigh, again. And then she continued, musingly: “So I s’pose you’re Joe Mellen, an’ the man you struck was Solomon Ray?”

He came to his feet with a spring.

“How’d you know?” he shouted.

“Law! I’ve been visitin’ over Hillside way!” said Mrs. Wadleigh, comfortably. “You couldn’t ha’ been very smart not to thought o’ that when I mentioned my darter Lucy, an’ where the childern went to school. No smarter’n you was to depend on that old wooden button! I know all about that drunken scrape. But the queerest part on’t was–Solomon Ray didn’t die!”

“Didn’t die!” the words halted, and he dragged them forth. “Didn’t die?”

“Law, no! you can’t kill a Ray! They brought him to, an’ fixed him up in good shape. I guess you mellered him some, but he’s more scairt than hurt. He won’t prosecute. You needn’t be afraid. He said he dared you to it. There, there now! I wouldn’t. My sake alive! le’ me git a light!”

For the stranger sat with his head bowed on the table, and he trembled like a child.

Next morning at eight o’clock, Mrs. Wadleigh was standing at the door, in the sparkling light, giving her last motherly injunction to the departing guest.

“You know where the depot is? An’ it’s the nine o’clock train you’ve got to take. An’ you remember what I said about hayin’ time. If you don’t have no work by the middle o’ May, you drop me a line, an’ perhaps I can take you an’ your wife, too; Lucy’s childern al’ays make a sight o’ work. You keep that bill safe, an’–Here, wait a minute! You might stop at Cyrus Pendleton’s–it’s the fust house arter you pass; the corner–an’ ask ’em to put a sparerib an’ a pat o’ butter into the sleigh, an’ ride over here to dinner. You tell ’em I’m as much obleeged to ’em for sendin’ over last night to see if I was alive, as if I hadn’t been so dead with sleep I couldn’t say so. Good-bye! Now, you mind you keep tight hold o’ that bill, an’, spend it prudent!”