Old Becky, keeper of the widower's keys, had followed closely the history
of those unhappy "cases;" she had listened to discussions, violent or
suppressed, she had heard much talk that went on behind her master's back.

Employers of that day and generation were masters; and masters are meant
to be outwitted. Emily, the youngest and last of the flock, was now a
child of four, dark like her mother, sturdy and strong like her father. On
an August day soon after the mother's funeral, Becky took her little
charge to the well and showed her a tumbler filled, with water not freshly
drawn.

"See them little specks and squirmy things?" Emmy saw them. She followed
their wavering motion in the glass as the stern forefinger pointed. "Those
are little baby snakes," said Becky mysteriously. "The well is full of
'em. Sometimes you can see 'em, sometimes you can't, but they're always
there. They never grow big down the well; it's too dark 'n' cold. But you
drink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and work all through
ye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your mother"--in a
whisper--"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister Ruth, and Dirck,
and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy wants to die"--Large
eyes of horror fastened on the speaker's face. "No--o, she don't want to
die, the Loveums! She don't want Becky to have no little girl left at all!
No; we mustn't ever drink any of that bad water--all full of snakes, ugh!
But if Emmy's thirsty, see here! Here's good nice water. It's going to be
always here in this pail--same water the little lambs drink up in the
fields. Becky 'll take Emmy up on the hill sometime and show where the
little lambs drink."

Grief had not clouded the farmer's oversight in petty things. He noticed