here
in the snow. Is that what you were yelling about? I thought you were a
catamount, at least."

He laughed. He had an idea, suddenly conceived, that the man, having a
keen sense of personal dignity, was subject to ridicule, and that a
laugh would be salutary for him. And he was right. Tenney straightened,
put his axe over his shoulder, and walked away down the hill.

IX

Raven stood looking after him a minute and then began an ostentatious
search for his knife, went to the little pile of brush and saw it--the
steel tip of the handle shining there--and pulled the brush aside to get
it. As he was rising with it in his hand, he saw Tenney turn and look
back at him. He held up the knife and called:

"I've got it."

Tenney, not answering even by a sign, went on over the rise and
disappeared below. Then Raven, after lingering a little to make sure he
did not reappear, turned up the slope and into the path at the left and
so came again to the hut. He unlocked the door and went in. She was
sitting by the fire and the child was on the floor, staring rather
vacuously at his little fingers, as if they interested him, but not
much. The woman was looking at the child, but only in a mechanical sort
of way, as if it were her job to look and she did it without intention
even when the child was safe. But she was also watching the door,
waiting for him; it was in an agony of expectation, and her eyes
questioned him the instant he stepped in.

"Warm enough?" he inquired, as incidentally, he hoped, as if it were not
unusual to find her here. "Let me throw on a log."

He did throw on two and the fire answered. The solemn child, who proved,
at closer view, to have an unusual beauty of pink cheeks, blue eyes, and
reddish hair, did not intermit his serious gaze at his fingers. When
Raven had put on the logs and dusted himself off, he found himself at a
loss. How should he begin? Was Tenney, with his catamount yells and his
axe, to be ignored altogether, or should he reassure her by telling her
the man had gone? But she herself began.

"I suppose," she said, in the eloquent low voice that seemed to make the
smallest word significant, "you think it's funny."

Raven knew what sense the word was meant to convey.

"No," he said, "not in the least. It's pretty bad for you, though," he
added gravely, on second thought that he might.

She made a little gesture with her hand. It was a beautifully formed
hand, but reddened with