such a thing.'

Now, wasn't that a true lady to speak up like that for him after
what he'd said of her? Mr. Oliver looked surprised at her speaking
up like that, her that hardly ever said a word except 'Yes, Dick
dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' and then he shrugs his shoulders and he
says, 'You are right, my dear, he's punished enough.'

And John turned to go like a dog that has been whipped; but at the
door he faced round, and he said to Mrs. Oliver, 'You're a good
woman, and I'm sorry I said what I did about you. But for the other
I'm not sorry, not if it was my last word.'

And with that he went out of the room, and out of the house through
the front door. He had no relations and he had no friends, and I
suppose he had nowhere to go with his character gone, and so it
happened that was truly his last word as far as any one knows. For
he was found next morning on the level-crossing after the down
express had passed.

You never saw such a fuss as every one made of me and James
afterwards. I might have been a queen and him a king. But when it
was all over it stuck in my mind that he oughtn't to have doubted
me, and so I wouldn't name the day for over a year, though Mrs.
Oliver had bought him a nice little hotel and given it to him
herself; but when the year was up, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came down to
stay again, and seeing them brought it all back, and his having
tried to save me as he had seemed more than his having doubted me.
And so I married him, and I don't think any one ever made a better
match. James says he made a better match, and if I don't agree with