"I understand ye," he said, with a sigh of resignation, "the noise o' the thing has been such that there's no evil men haven't thought of me, or madness of her.

Ye think the living creature ye saw rise from the coffin was, maybe, the dead man's daughter ?" "I think it was much too big for a woman." "Oh, as to that, she was a good height." Perhaps, with involuntary thought of what might have been, he drew himself up to his full stature as he said, "A grand height for a woman; but as to this idea of yours, I'll not say ye're insulting her by it, though! that's true too; but I've had the same notion; and now I'll tell ye something.

She was not mad; she took clothes; she left everything in order.

Was that the act of a maniac?
and if she wasn't mad, clean out of her wits, would she have done such a thing as ye're thinking of ?" "No"-- thoughtfully--"I should think not." "And, furthermore; if she had wished to do it, where is it she could have laid him?
D'ye think I haven't looked the ground over?
There's no place where she could have buried him, and to take him to the lake was beyond her strength." There was nothing of the everyday irascibility about his voice; the patience of a great grief was upon him, as he argued away the gross suspicion.
"That settles it." Trenholme said this willingly enough.
"Yes, it settles it; for if there was a place where the earth was loose I dug with my own hands down to the very rock, and neither man nor woman lay under it." Trenholme was affected; he again renounced his suspicion.
"And now I've told ye that," said Bates, "I'll tell ye something else, for it's right ye should know that when the spring comes it'll not be in my power to help ye with the logs--not if we should lose the flood and have to let 'em lie till next year--for when the snow passes, I must be on the hills seeking her." (He had put a brown, bony hand to shade his eyes, and from out its shade he looked.) "There were many to help me seek her alive; I'll take none wi' me when I go to give her burial." The other saddened; The weary length and uncertainty of such a search, and its dismal purpose, came to him.
"You've no assurance that she hasn't drowned herself in the lake here," he cried, remonstrating.
"But I have that; and as ye'll be naturally concerned at me leaving the logs, I'll tell ye what it is, if ye'll give me your word as an honest man that ye'll not repeat it at any time or place whatsoever." He looked so like a man seeking courage to confess some secret sin that Trenholme drew back.
"I'll not _tell_, but--" Bates took no heed.

"My aunt," he began, "had money laid by; she had ten English sovereigns she liked to keep by her--women often do.