with you, wherever you're going."

This, it seemed, moved her to a terror more acute.

"No! no!" she said, and she appeared to have so little breath to say it
that, if he had not been watching her lips, he could not have caught it.
"Not you. That would make him madder'n ever. You go away. Hide you
somewheres, quick."

"No," said Raven, "I sha'n't hide. I'll hide you. Come along."

He took her by the arm and, though she was remonstrating breathlessly,
hurried her to the left. They passed the three firs at the turn and he
smiled a little, noting Jerry's good road and thinking there was some
use in this combined insistence on his following the steps of Old Crow.
There was the hut, in its rough kindliness, and there, the smoke told
him, was a fire. Jerry had been up that morning, because Charlotte must
have known he'd come there the first thing. Still smoothing the road to
Old Crow! He had been fumbling with one hand for the key, the while he
kept the other on her arm. She was so terrified a creature now that he
did not trust her not to break blindly away and run. He unlocked the
door, pushed her in, closed and locked it. Then he dropped the key in
his pocket and went back to the wood road. With a sudden thought, he
took his knife from his pocket and tossed it down the road into a little
heap of brush. Meanwhile the man was coming nearer and, as he came, he
called: "Hullo!"

Raven, waiting for him, speculated on the tone. What did it mean? It was
a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as
if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been
strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's
breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer
fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as
if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him
to go the faster. He was a thin man with long arms and he carried an
axe. Raven called to him:

"Hullo, there! Take a look as you come along and see if you can find my
knife."

The man stopped short, straightened, and looked at him. Meantime Raven,
bending in his search, went toward him, scrutinizing the road from side
to side. He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him:
a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning
glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an
ascetic face, and yet there was pas