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?"