Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 2 — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SICKLE OF FATE. home there alone up in her room, she saw Flora walk down the street. She was wear- ing the dress that they had made, and carrying her roses. Some one was waiting for her at the parsonage gate. Lucy thought first ‘twas Will Davis, but as they turned up the path together, she saw it was Nathan Swain. ‘IT guess from that moment she wasn’t responsible. She talked to me, as if it was years ago, and she’d found out he was leav- ing her for somebody else. It seemed as if she couldn’t bear it. She said the next thing she knew she was around behind the houses, creeping along. She saw Mr. Grant go out to the garden and after that I came to the well. She kept hidden until my back was turned. She could see the kitchen door here to the parsonage was open, and on the step, where I’d put it lay my sickle. She hadn’t thought much about why she had come until she saw that. But she picked it up as she crept into the house. Listening here in the sitting-room, she could hear Flora crying. She was begging Nathan Swain to let her go. When he answered he kept his voice low, but he was angry, and they came out to the hall. A minute later the front door opened and Flora ran out. ** Lucy waited until she heard footsteps again in the study. Then she tiptoed across the hall. Nathan Swain was kneeling on the hearth-rug with his back to the door, gathering up some of the jewelry that was ' scattered on the carpet. She crept up be- hind him so silently that he didn’t turn— and probably he never knew. That was all she remembered, she said, until afterward, when she was coming out of the study. She saw a bouquet of roses in her path. She snatched it up and tore it to pieces, and trampled the blossoms under her feet. Then she walked up-stairs to Hetty.” CHAPTER VII. PAST AND PRESENT. S Joel: finished speaking he turned his A eyes toward the huddled figure on the couch. No one prompted her, but after a moment Hetty took up the story brokenly. , -of the day to see the minister. outside in the hall. was Lucy. She stood in the doorway, look- | 313 “I'd been sewing up-stairs in the room over the kitchen all the afternoon, hurrying ‘to finish a dress for Mrs. Grant. When the knocker sounded I didn’t pay any attention, because there are folks coming in all times Bu‘ it wasn’t long before I heard him go through the garden, and a little later I heard Will Davis drive by. I knew then I’d have to sew fast, for it must be six o’clock, and I wa’n’t quite finished. When I looked out the west window again, I happened to see Mrs. Winslow coming down the street. She was hurrying, and I thought she must have forgotten something at the store for supper. “I was just beginning to pull out the last of the basting-threads when there were steps I looked up and there ing dreadful. She had something wrapped in her skirt, and the front of her dress was all blood.” ‘I’ve killed him!’ she gasped, and she held out the sickle. “I ran to get it away from her. I thought she didn’t know what she was say- ing. But. there was all that blood. ‘ He’s lying down there in the study,’ she whis- | pered. I've suffered all I can.’ ‘ It seemed as if the world came crashing down upon me. But I had to try to think, for maybe we only had a minute. I dragged her along the hall to the attic door by Mrs. Grant’s bedroom. . ‘ You go up there and hide,’ I says. ‘ I'll come to you quick as Ican.’ She’s always done everything I told her to, and she: didn’t ask any questions. When I’d shut the garret door, I see I still held the sickle. I carried it through Mrs. Grant’s bedroom and raised the screen in the west window. Then I threw it as far as I could into the grass that wa’n’t cut yet. “ Back in the kitchen bedroom again I found I’d got blood all over my apron. I took it off and poured some water on it from the pitcher to wash my hands. Then I rolled it up and hid it over there back of the bureau. I tied on a clean apron of Mrs. Grant’s that I found in the clothes-basket, and I turned over the rag-rug by the door where Lucy had been standing. There wa'n’t time to wipe up the blood-drops in the hall, but it was twilight, ) and when nile ‘ Put your arms around me, Hetty, en Mrs. __ O)(OV(O) COlini