Roxton, like a certain lady of literary fame, was ever ready with its free opinions on any subject that it did not understand. The return of the Murchisons had exercised the town’s capacity for criticism, and inaugurated a debate that was to be heard at public-house bars, as well as in the parlors of the pious. The facts of the case were generally agreed upon; but facts are things that the ingenious mind of man can juggle with. The complexion of the affair varied with the convictions of the debater, and the sacred incidents of home life profaned or honored according to the temper of the tongue that dealt with them.

In Mill Lane the case had a most energetic exponent in the person of Mr. William Bains, the sweep. A certain brewer’s drayman, who had won some crude celebrity as an atheist, had taken upon himself to argue on the adverse side. The two gentlemen squared to each other one evening at the bottom of the lane, and thrashed it out strenuously before a meagre but attentive crowd.

“What about the inquest? Didn’t we read the ’ole of it in the Mail and Times? Yer can’t get away from facts, can yer?”

“And supposin’ he did make a mistake for once, does that mean callin’ a man a fool and a danger to the public? Who drove his cart last week into a pillar-box by Wilson’s grocery shop?”

Mr. Bains scored a palpable hit. The audience laughed.

“Got ’im there, William,” said a neighbor.

The drayman sniffed, and threw out his stomach.

“Facts is facts. Doctorin’ ain’t drivin’ ’osses.”

“Thank the Lord, Mr. Sweetyer, it ain’t, for our sakes.”

“I say the man blundered.”

“And who ’asn’t run ’is nose into a lamp-post on occasions? Why, look ’ere,” and Mr. Bains stretched out a didactic forefinger, “when my little girl ’ad the diphtheria, who pulled ’er through? And who saved old Jenny Lowther’s leg? And there was young Ben Thompson, who some London joker swore was a dyin’ man!”

“That’s true,” said a bony woman in an old red blouse.

The drayman, finding the neighbors inclined to take the sweep’s view of the matter, began to look hot, and a little nettled.

“Well, what ’ave yer got to say about the booze?” he asked.

“I reckon that’s more your business than mine.”

Again the audience caught the gibe and laughed.

“Three gallons a day, that’s ’is measure,” interjected a morose gentleman, who was hanging over his garden gate and smoking the stump of a clay pipe.

“Wasn’t ’e carried ’ome from the club?”

“P’r’aps ’e was, p’r’aps ’e wasn’t. Any fool could ’ave seen that the man ’ad been workin’ hisself to death. Why, he fainted bang off one mornin’, round at our ’ouse. Ask my missus. A thimbleful o’ brandy would ’ave made a man in ’is state ’ug the railin’s.”

“Anyhow, he hugged ’em,” said the obdurate opponent.

“We ain’t always responsible for what we do when we’ve ’ad a bad smack over the side of the jaw.”

“Doct’rs oughtn’t ter touch it.”

“You’re a nice one to preach, now, ain’t yer?”

“He is that,” quoth the laconic worthy at the gate.

“Look ’ere, don’t you go shovin’ it into me—sideways.”

“Let me argue ’im, Mr. Catt.”

“Argue, you ’ain’t got a leg to stand on!”

“Haven’t I, my boy!” and the two disputants began to glare.

The drayman wiped his hands on the back of his breeches.

“Some fool’ll be callin’ me a liar soon,” he remarked.

“It’s on the cards.”

“Look ’ere, Bill Bains, I’ve ’ad enough of your sarce. Stow it.”

“You go and bully your kids. Can’t I speak my mind when I bloomin’ well like?”

“Course ’e can,” said the lady in the red blouse; “and ’e speaks it well, ’e does. Murchison was always a right down gentleman; better than that there little nipper, Steel.”

“Right for you, Mrs. Penny. We don’t go blackguardin’ other people’s characters, do we?”

“I ain’t blackguardin’ the man, I’m statin’ facts.”

“Facts, facts—why, the man’s clean daft on facts. Facts must be another name for a pint of bitter.”

“I’ll smash your jaw, Bill Bains, if you don’t stow it.”

“Smash away, my buck. Who’s afraid of a bloomin’ cask?”

Whereon the dwellers in Mill Lane were treated to an exhibition of two minutes straight hitting, an exhibition that ended in the intervention of friends. But since the drayman departed with a red nose and a swollen eye, it may be inferred that the sweep had the best of the argument.

To have one’s past, present, and future dragged through the back streets of a country town is not an experience that a man of self-respect would welcome. A sensitive spirit cannot fail to feel the atmosphere about it. It may see the sun shining, the clouds white against the blue, the natural phenomena of health and of well-being; or the faces of a man’s fellows may be as sour puddles to him, their sympathy a wet December.

Trite as the saying is, that in trouble we make trial of our friends, only those who have faced defeat know the depth and meaning of that time-worn saying. A week in Roxton betrayed to Catherine and her husband the number and the sincerity of their friends. The instinct of pride is wondrous quick in detecting truth from shams, even as an expert’s fingers can tell old china by the feel. The population of the place was soon mapped out into the priggishly polite, the piously distant, the vulgarly inquisitive, the unaffected honest, and the honestly indifferent. Catherine met many a face that brightened to hers in the Roxton streets. The past seemed to have banked more good-will for them then they had imagined. It was among the poor that they found the least forgetfulness, less of the cultured and polite hauteur, less affectation, less hypocrisy. As for the practice, they found it non-existent that first humiliating yet half-happy week.

But perhaps the sincerest person in Roxton at that moment was the wife of Dr. Parker Steel. Betty was not a passionate woman in the matter of her affections, but in her capabilities for hatred she concentrated the energy of ten. She had come quite naturally to regard herself as the most gifted and interesting feminine personality that Roxton could boast. Every woman has an instinctive conviction that her own home, and her own children, are immeasurably superior to all others. With Betty Steel, this spirit of womanly egotism had been largely centred on herself. She had no children to make her jealous and critical towards other women’s children. It was the symmetry of her own success in life that had developed into an enthralling art, an art that absorbed her whole soul.

It might have been imagined that she had climbed too high to trouble about an old hate; that she was too sufficiently assured of her own glory to stoop to attack a humbled rival. Jealousy and a sneaking suspicion of inferiority had embittered the feud for her of old; and Kate Murchison, saddened and aged, half a suppliant for the loyalty of a few good friends, could still inspire in Betty a spirit of aggressive and impatient hate. She remembered that she had seen Catherine triumphant where she herself had received indifference and disregard. The instinct to crush this antipathetic rival was as fierce and keen in her as ever.

“Call on her,” had been Madge Ellison’s suggestion.

“Call on her!”

“It would be more diplomatic.”

“Do you imagine, Madge, that I am going to make advances to that woman? She used to snub me once; my turn has come. I give the Murchisons just six months in Roxton.”

How little mercy Betty Steel had in that intolerant and subtle heart of hers was betrayed by the strategic move that opened the renewal of hostilities. She had driven Kate Murchison out of Roxton once, and the arrogance of conquest was as fierce in this slim, refined-faced woman as in any Alexander. She moved in a small and limited sphere, but the aggressive spirit was none the less inevitable in its lust to overthrow. The ............