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Miranda watched through a rain of thankful tears as David escorted his guest out of the front door, and then she flew into the parlor and watched as they went arm in arm up the street and knocked at her grandfather’s door. She waited with bated breath until a candle light appeared at her grandfather’s bedroom window, and slowly descended the stairs; waited again while the two went in, and another light appeared above, showing that a hasty toilet was being made; stood cold and patient by the window during an interminable time, imagining the conference that must be going on in the Heath kitchen; and finally was rewarded by seeing three men come out of the Heath door and walk slowly down the street to the big house across the way. She noted that Lawrence Billings walked between the other two. She could tell him by his slight build, and cringing attitude as he walked, and once they stopped and seemed to parley, both the other men putting strong hands upon his shoulders.

There was another delay, and she could hear the Whitney knocker sounding hollowly down the silent street. Then a head was thrust out of the upper window and a voice called loudly: “Who’s there!” Miranda had opened the parlor window just a crack, and her heart beat wildly as she knelt and laid her ear beside the crack. In a few minutes a light appeared in the fan-shaped windiw over the front door and then the door itself was opened and the visitors let in.

Miranda waited then only to see the light appear in the front windows and the shadows of the four men against the curtain. Then she dropped on her knees by the window and let her tears have their way. “Thanks be!” she murmured softly again and again. “Thanks be!”

Whatever came now, Allan was cleared. At least three men in the town knew, and they would do the right thing. She was almost dubious about their having told Mr. Whitney. She thought he deserved to feel all the trouble that could come to him through his children for the way he had treated them; but after all it was good to have Allan cleared in the eyes of his father, too.

The conference in the Whitney house was long and Miranda did not wait until it was over. She climbed the stairs softly to her room, answered Marcia’s gentle, “Is that you, Miranda?” with a gruff, “Yes, I ben down in the kitchen quite a spell,” and closing her door went straight to the starlit window and gazed out. There was only a star or two on duty that night, fitfully visible between the clouds, but Miranda looked up to them wistfully. Somewhere under them, if he were still on the earth, was Allan. Oh, if the stars could but give him the message that his name was cleared! Perhaps, somehow, the news would reach him, and some day he might return. Her heart leaped high with the thought.

Oh, Allan, in the wide far world! Have you ere a thought for the little girl whose heart beat true to yours, grown a woman now, and suffering for your sorrows yet? The years have been long and she has waited well; and has accomplished for you at last the thing she set her heart upon. Will the stars take the message, and will you ever come back?

She crept to her bed too excited to sleep, and lay there listening for sounds across the street. The solemn silent night paced on, and still that candle-beam shone straight across the road. But at last there were voices, and the opening of a door; grave voices full of weighty matters and an awed good-night. She went to her window to watch again. David came straight across to his own door, but Lawrence Billings went arm in arm with her grandfather to his home. Not to the smoke-house, cold and damp, where Allen had been put, but into the comfortable quiet house, with at least the carpet-covered sofa to lie upon, and the banked-up fire, and the car for company. Grandfather Heath would never put Lawrence Billings into the smoke-house, he was too respectable. Miranda, with a lingering thought of Allan and his protection of the weakling, was almost glad that it was so. There was after all something pitifully ridiculous in the thought of Lawrence Billings huddled in the dark of the smoke-house with his fear of ghosts and spectres haunting him on every side. The fine strong Allan in all his youthful courage could not be daunted by it, but Lawrence Billings would crumple all up with the terror of it. Then Miranda went back to her bed, pulled the covers up over her head and laughed till she cried at the resemblance of Lawrence Billings frightened by a tablecloth.

The days that followed were grave and startling. After the revelation on the following morning there came a stream of visitors to the Spafford house to see Miranda. On one pretext or another they asked for her; to the back door for a cup of molasses, or to the front door to know if she would run over and stay with an ailing member of the family that evening while the others went out; anything so they could see Miranda. And always before the interview was ended they managed to bring in the mesmerizing at Hannah Skinner’s.

“Say, Mirandy, did you reely see a speret? An’ how did you know what to say? Did they tell you the words to speak?” one would ask. And Miranda would reply:

“Well, now, Sa’r’ Ann! I don’ know’s I ken rightly say. You see I disremember seein’ any sperets ’tall, ’r hearing’ any; an’ as fer what I said, I can’t ’count fer it. They tell me I talked a lot o’ fool nonsense, but it seems t’v all passed from my mind. It’s queer how that mesmerizin’ works ennyhow. I didn’t b’leeve much in it when I went into it, an’ I can’t say ’z I think much of it now. I ’member seein’ a white mist risin’ off’n the ground when I come home, but I don’t much b’leeve sperets walks the’ airth, d’ you? It don’t seem commonsensy, now do y’ think? No, I can’t rightly say’z I remember hearin’ ‘r seein’ anythin’. I guess ef I did all passed off when my head stopped feelin’ queer. Funny ’bout Lawrence Billings takin’ it to heart that-a-way, wa’n’t it? You wouldn’t never uv picked him out t’ commit a crime, now would you? My Mr. David says it’s a c’wince’dence. Quite a c’wince’dence! Them’s the words he used t’ the breakfast table, talkin’ to Mrs. Marcia. He says: ‘Thet was quite a c’wince’dence, M’randy, but don’t you go to meddlin’ with that there mesmerism again, f’y was you,’ sez he. An’ I guess he’s ’bout right. Did you hear they was going’ to start up the singin’ school again next week?”

And that’s about all the information anybody got out of Miranda.

The next few days were marked by the sudden and hasty departure of Julia Thatcher for her home, and the resurrecting of past events in preparation for the trial of Lawrence Billings, which was set for the next week, the interval being given for Enoch Taylor’s grandson and only heir to arrive from his distant home.

During this interval Miranda was twice moved to make dainty dishes and take them to Lawrence Billings, who was still in solitary confinement in her grandfather’s house. Her grandmother received the dishes grudgingly, told her she was a fool, and slammed the door, but Miranda somehow felt as if she had made it even with her conscience for having put the poor creature into his present position. She knew Allan would like her to show him some little attention, and while she strongly suspected that the dainty dishes never reached the prisoner’s tray, still it did her good to make them and take them. Miranda was always a queer mixture of vindictiveness and kindness. She had driven Lawrence Billings to his doom for the sake of Allan and now she felt sorry for him.

It was weeks afterward that Miranda managed to return Hannah Skinner’s tablecloth, for Hannah was bitter against her cousin by reason of the notoriety that had been brought upon her. She had made that evening gathering with a mesmerist as entertainer for the sake of popularity, but to be mixed up in a murder case was much too popular even for Hannah.

The way Miranda managed the tablecloth was a simple one after all. She went to see Hannah when she knew Hannah was over at her mother’s house. Slipping unobtrusively out of the Spafford house from the door on the side way from the Heath’s she made a detour, going to the next neighbor’s first, and from there on a block or two, and finally returning to Hannah’s house by a long way around another street. She was well acquainted with the hiding place of Hannah’s key and had no trouble in getting in. She had lain awake nights planning a place to put that tablecloth where it would seem perfectly natural to Hannah for it to have slipped out of sight, and had hit upon the very place, down behind a high chest of drawers that Hannah kept in her dining-room. It took but an instant to slide the tablecloth neatly down behind it, and Miranda was out of the house with the door locked behind her and the key in its place under the mat in a trice. There was no neighbor near enough to have noticed her entrance. The next week, just as Miranda had planned she would do pretty soon, Hannah came across the aisle to the Spafford pew and whispered:

“M’randy, whatever could you have done with my second-best tablecloth the night of my party?”

And Miranda glibly responded:

“I put it on the top o’ the chest in the dinin’-room, Hannah; better look behind it. It might a’fell down, there was so much goin’ on thet night.”

“It couldn’t,” said Hannah, “I always move that out when I sweep.” But she looked, and to her astonishment found her tablecloth.

“It seems as if there must be some magic about this house,” she remarked to Lemuel that night at supper.

“Better not to meddle with such things, my dear,” said Lemuel, with his little mouth pursed up like a cherry. “You know I didn’t want that man to come here, but you would have him.”

“Nonsense!” said Hannah sharply. “It was all Mirandy’s doings. If I hadn’t invited her there wouldn’t have been a bit of this fuss. I thought she would know enough to keep in the kitchen and mind the coffee. I never expected her to want to be mesmerized. Such a fool! I believe she was smitten with the man!”

“Mebbe so! Mebbe so!” chirped Lemuel affably, taking a big bite of Hannah’s hot biscuit and honey, and thinking of the days when he was smitten with Hannah.

When this surmise of Hannah’s reached Miranda, by way of her grandmother, Miranda chuckled.

“Wal, now, I hadn’t thought o’ that, gran’ma, but p’raps that was what’s the matter. He didn’t look to me like much of a man to be smit with; but then when one’s gitten’ on to be a ole maid like me it ain’t seemly to be too pertic’ler. Howsomenever, ef I was smit it didn’t go more’n skin deep, so you needn’t to worry. I ain’t lookin’ to disgrace this fam’bly with no gleasy-lookin’, long-haired jackanapes of a mesmeriman yit awhiles, not s’ long I kin earn my keep. Want I should stir thet fire up fer yeh ’fore I go back home?”

And Miranda went singing on her way back home chuckling to herself as she went.

“Smit with him! Now ain’t that real r’dic’lous? Smit with a thing like thet!”

Then her face went grave and sweet and she paused at the door stone ere she entered and stretched her hands longingly toward the thread of a young moon that was rising back of the barn.

“Oh, Allan!” she murmured softly, and “Oh, Allan!” again; and the soul of the little girl that Allan had kissed stood tenderly in her eyes for an instant.

Then she was herself again and went cheerfully in to get supper for the people she loved; and nobody ever dreamed, as they looked at the strong wholesome girl going springily, joyously about her kitchen, of the exquisite youth and depth of feeling hidden away in the depths of her great loving heart. Only Marcia sometimes caught in wonder a passing reminder in Miranda’s eyes of the light that glowed in the eyes of little Rose.