Two years slipped by, and then the neighborhood that had dozed off, as it were, awoke to hear that the sister was going to marry that awful man.
At once the vigilance committee arose, and took the case in hand.
"It can't be possible," it cried to the woman.
"Yes, it is true," she said.
"Why, don't you know that he killed your sister?"
"I know he did."
"And you are going to marry him, in face of that?"
"Yes."
"Well, he'll kill you."
"Oh, no, he won't kill me"--there was a peculiar light in her eyes that puzzled them.
"What can you want to marry such a man for?" they cried, coming back to the original question.
"To keep the children. If I don't marry him, some one else will, and those children will go out of my hands."
Her devotion to the motherless brood had been past praise. There was nothing more to be said, and if there had been it would have availed nothing, for the sister had a mind of her own. She was one of those handsome women, who walk this earth like queens, and to whom lesser folk defer.
She married, and lo! the neighborhood was agog once more, for strange stories came floating from out that handsome house, and it appeared for a time that instead of his killing her she was like to kill him.
I remember one tale in particular, which my mother who, by the way, was no gossip, and was as peaceable as a barnyard fowl, was in the habit of rehearsing before a chosen few, occasionally, with a quiet relish that was amusing, considering the fact that ordinarily any comment on her neighbors' affairs was alien to her. It appeared that after a short wedding trip, during which the bridegroom had several times shown the cloven foot, the couple returned to their domicile. Probably the maids who had lived there for some years and were devoted to the new wife, had been warned of what was coming. At all events, they accepted everything as a matter of course.
Upon the evening of the married pair's return, a handsome dinner was served. The train was a trifle behind time; the day had been cold, and several other untoward circumstances had conspired to let loose the bridegroom's natural depravity. An overdone roast served to touch off this inflammable material.
"---- these servants!" he exclaimed; "I'll kick every one of them through the front window! Look at that roast!"