done that she ought not to have done? She had saved his life. He had
saved hers, and he married her."

"There was no minister," said Rebecca, with a tightening of her
childish dimpled mouth and a reddening of her cheeks and a little
indignant toss of the chin.

"Rebecca! How could they get a minister a thousand leagues away from
any church? They will get one now----"

Rebecca rose stiffly, her little lily face all aflame.

"My father saith much evil cometh of this--it is sin--he ought not to
have married her; and--and--it is very wrong of you to be telling me
this--" she stammered angrily, with her little hands clasped tight
across the white stomacher.

"Very unfit," comes from that young gentleman of the cloth.

We were all three standing, and I make no doubt my own face went as red
as theirs, for the taunt bit home. That inference of evil where no
evil was, made an angrier man than was my wont. The two moved towards
the door. I put myself across their way.

"Rebecca, you do yourself wrong! You are measuring other people's
deeds with too short a yardstick, little woman, and the wrong is in
your own mind, not theirs."

"I--I--don't know what you mean!" cried Rebecca obstinately, with a
break in her voice that ought to have warned; but her next words