sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by
struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into
lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another
woman held his vows, and she was degraded. Her soul was wrecked as
truly as if the whole world knew it, and could cry to her "Shame!" and
"Shame!" The church-bells clanged out their judgment of her. A new
thought awakened her to a new despair. She was not fit to teach in
Sunday-school any more. Her girls, her innocent, sweet girls! There was
contagion in her very breath. They must be saved from it; else when
they were old women like her, some sudden vice of tainted blood might
rise up in them, no one would know why, and breed disease and shame.
She started to her feet. Her knees trembling under her, she ran out of
the house, and hid herself behind the great lilac-bush by the gate.

Deacon Caleb Rivers came jogging past, late for church, but driving
none the less moderately. His placid-faced wife sat beside him; and
Dorcas, stepping out to stop them, wondered, with a wild pang of
perplexity over the things of this world, if 'Mandy Rivers had ever
known the feeling of death in the soul. Caleb pulled up.

"I can't come to Sunday-school, to-day," called Dorcas, stridently.
"You tell them to give Phoebe my class. And ask her if she'll keep it.
I sha'n't teach any more."

"Ain't your father so well?" asked Mrs. Rivers, sympathetically,
bending forward and smoothing her mitts. Dorcas caught at the reason.

"I sha'n't leave him any more," she said. "You tell 'em so. You fix
it."