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"No-o-o, I don't see—" Here, to her surprise, she saw that her water bucket was dry. She had believed it full.

"I thought I had some water. You may bring some if you will, Mr. Belshue."

Her notion that she already had water stirred a painful suspicion in Belshue which he could not analyse. He stepped across to the bucket, but hesitated, exploring his uneasiness and trying to define it. Some impulse caused him to ask abruptly, "Nessie, did you hurt your hand at the well while ago?"

She looked at her hands. "No—why?"

"Nothing," he said in a kind of uncertain relief. "That Teeftallow boy said you hurt your hand at the well while ago, that was what made you cry."

Nessie looked at the jeweller with widened eyes, drew a breath, then said in a low tone, "No—he was—mistaken—I didn't hurt my hand."

By this Belshue knew that Nessie meant Abner had told an untruth. She never said any one told an untruth, but always softened it into a "mistake."

The husband thought quickly and gratefully, "That proves Teeftallow lied; then he must have insulted her." He had it on his lips, was drawing in a breath to ask, "Did he insult you, Nessie?" when a certain thing stopped him. He shifted his question to, "Why did you cry, Nessie?" when again he paused with the shaken feeling of a man with one foot slipping over a precipice. The inhibiting thought was this: he knew that his wife would hesitate, pale, but finally she would tell him the exact truth. A chariness of intruding into his wife's confidence had grown on him in the few months of their married life. She would tell him the truth. Now, as he stood with his unuttered question on his lips, "Why did you weep?" a sudden discomforting analysis dawned on his mind for the first time. He had made a mistake when he had searched out and married his ideal, a sincere truthful woman. He had always imagined he wanted a completely truthful wife, but he had not anticipated that