Yet here were the proofs.

Over Bessy and her friends Lane saw the dim dark shape of a ghastly phantom, reaching out, enfolding, clutching.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and here he burned the writings.
"It ought to be told," he muttered.

"But who's going to tell it?
Who'd believe me?
The truth would not be comprehended by the mothers of Middleville....

And who's to blame ?" It would not do, Lane reflected, to place the blame wholly upon blind fathers and mothers, though indeed they were culpable.