were very big, just as they had been when Ward mistook her for
Buck Olney and so let her see into another one of the dark places of
life. It seemed to Billy Louise that she was being compelled to look
into a good many dark places, lately.

Marthy took the two photographs and looked at the first with hatred.
"The Jezebel! She won't git to run it over ole Marthy," she muttered
with sullen triumph and twisted the cardboard spitefully in her gnarled
old fingers. "She can't come here an' take all I've got an' never give
me a thankye for it. I'm shet uh her, anyway." She twisted again and
yet again, till the picture was a handful of ragged scraps of
cardboard. Then she raised herself to an elbow and flung the fragments
far from her and lay down again with glum satisfaction.

Her fingers touched the other picture, which had slid to the couch.
Mechanically she picked it up and held it so that the light from the
window struck it full. This was Charlie's face--Charlie with the
falsely frank smile in his eyes, and with his lips curved as they did
when he was just going to say, "Now, Aunt Martha!" in tender protest
against her too eager industry.

Marthy's chin began to quiver while she looked. Her lips sagged with
the pull of her aching heart. For the third time in her life Billy
Louise saw big, slow tears gather in Marthy's hard blue eyes and slide
down the leathery seams in her cheeks. Billy Louise looked, found her
vision blurring with her own tears, and turned and tiptoed from the
room.

Seabeck was gone somewhere on his horse. Billy Louise guessed shrewdly
that he was down in the meadows, looking over the cattle and trying to
estimate the extent of the thievery. She put Blue in the stable and
fed him, with that half-mechanical habit of attending to the needs of
one's mount which becomes second nature to the range-bred. She would
not go on to the Wolverine; that needed no decision; she accepted it at
once as a fact. Marthy needed her now more than anyone. More even
than Ward, though Billy Louise hated to think of him up there alone and
practically helpless. But Marthy must have her to-night. Marthy was
facing her bitterest sorrow since Minervy died, and Marthy was old.
Ward, Billy Louise reminded herself sternly, was not old, and he was
facing happiness--so far as he or anyone knew. She wanted very much to
be with Ward, but she could not delude her conscience into believing
that he needed her more than d