Eva cut wildly into the silk with mad slashes of her gleaming shears, while two neighboring women, who had just come into the room, stared aghast, and even Fanny was partly diverted from her sorrow.

“She’s crazy,” whispered one of the women, backing away as she spoke.

“Oh, Eva, don’t; don’t do so,” pleaded Fanny, tremulously.

“I be,” said Eva, and she cut recklessly up the front breadth.

“You ain’t cutting it right,” said the other neighbor, who was skilful in such matters, and never fully moved from her own household grooves by any excitement.  “If you are a-goin’ to cut it at all, you had better cut it right.”

“I don’t care how I cut it,” returned Eva, thrusting the woman away.  “Oh, I don’t care how I cut it; I want to waste it.  I will waste it.”

The other neighbor backed entirely out of the room, then turned and fled across the yard, her calico wrapper blowing wildly and lashing about her slender legs, to her own house, the doors of which she locked.  Presently the other woman followed her, stepping with the ponderous leisure which results from vastness of body and philosophy of mind.  The autumn wind, swirling in impetuous gusts, had little effect upon her broadside of woollen shawl.  She had not come out on that raw evening with nothing upon her head.  She shook the kitchen door of her friend, and smiled with calm reassurance when it was cautiously set ajar to disclose a wide-eyed and open-mouthed face of terror.  “Who is it?”

“It’s me.  What have you got your door locked for?”

“I think that Eva Loud is raving crazy.  I’m afraid of her.”

“Lord! you ’ain’t no reason to be ’fraid of her.  She ain’t crazy.  She’s only lettin’ the birds that fly over your an’ my heads settle down to roost.  You and me, both of us, if we was situated jest as she is, might think of doin’ jest what she’s a-doin’, but we won’t neither of us do it.  We’d let our best dresses hang in the closet, safe and sound, while we cut them up in our souls; but Eva, she’s different.”

“Well, I don’t care.  I believe she’s crazy, and I’m going to keep my doors locked.  How do you know she hasn’t killed Ellen and put her in the well?”

“Stuff!  Now you’re lettin’ your birds roost, Hattie Monroe.”

“I read something that wasn’t any worse than that in the paper the other day.  I should think they would look in the well.  Have Mrs. Jones and Miss Cross gone home?”

“No; they are over there.  There’s poor Andrew coming now; I wonder if he has heard anything?”

Both women eyed hesitatingly poor Andrew Brewster’s dejected figure creeping up the road in the dark.

“You holler and ask him,” said the woman in the door.

“I hate to, for I know by his looks he ’ain’t heard anything of her.  I know he’s jest comin’ home to rest a minute, so he can start again.  I know he ’ain’t eat a thing since last night.  Well, Maria has got some coffee all made, and a nice little piece of steak ready to cook.”