"Oh, stop blaming yourself—it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it—you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault.  Where did you hide it?"

I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach.  So for a minute I didn't say nothing; then I says:

"I'd ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to.  Do you reckon that 'll do?"

"Oh, yes."

So I wrote:  "I put it in the coffin.  It was in there when you was crying there, away in the night.  I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane."

It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says:

"_Good_-bye.  I'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if I don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of you a many and a many a time, and I'll _pray_ for you, too!"—and she was gone.

Pray for me!  I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size.  But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that kind.  She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn't no back-down to her, I judge.  You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.  It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery.  And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she lays over them all.  I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for _her_, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.

Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see her go.  When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:

"What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?"