"Oh," she said appealingly, and beginning to tremble, "are you true with
me, ma'am?"

"I am true, indeed I am!" Helen answered, unconscious that her own tears
fell upon Mrs. Davis's hands; the woman looked at her, and suddenly her
face began to flush that painful red which comes before violent weeping.

"If you're true, if you're right, then I can be sorry. I wouldn't let
myself be sorry while I couldn't have no hope. Oh, I can be that sorry it
turns me glad!"

The hardness was all gone now; she broke into a storm of tears, saying
between her sobs, "Oh, I'm so glad--I'm so glad!"

A long time the two women sat together, the widow still shaken by gusts
of weeping, yet listening hungrily to Helen's words, and sometimes even
smiling through her tears. The hardship of loss to herself and her
children was not even thought of; there was only intense relief from
horrible fear; she did not even stop to pity Tom for the pain of death;
coming out of that nightmare of hell, she could only rejoice.

The early sunset flashed a sudden ruddy light through the window in the
front room, making a gleaming bar on the bare whitewashed wall, and
startling Helen with the lateness of the hour.

"I must go now," she said, rising. "I will come again to-morrow."

Mrs. Davis rose, too, lifting her tear-stained face, with its trembling
smile, towards her deliverer. "Won't you come in the other room a
minute?" she said. "I want to show you the coffin. I got the best I