anything. But you see how good you looked
to me. It doesn't hurt any of us to be Catholic, if we're good."

"I didn't mean anything," she said humbly. "Only there ain't many round
here."

"You say your husband is religious. Does he go to church?"

"Yes," she answered soberly, and also with a kind of wonder at a man's
accomplishing so dull an observance. "We go twice every Sunday, an'
Sunday school an' evenin' meetin' besides."

"Do you like it?"

"No," she said, looking rueful, as if trusting he might forgive her. "I
git sleepy."

At this Raven laughed and she glanced at him mildly, as if wandering
what he had found to please him. He had been thinking.

"Now," he said, "we must plan what you're going to do. You won't let me
send you and the baby away to stay awhile?"

She shook her head.

"Then what are we going to do? Can't you let me go to him and tell him,
man to man, what an infernal fool he is?"

A wild alarm flew into her face.

"No! no!" she said.

"What is going to happen? You can't go home."

"Oh, yes, I can," said she. "I always do. It works off. Maybe it's
worked off now. He gits all wore out actin' the way he does, an' then
he's terrible scared for fear I've made way with myself, an' he's all
bowed down."

"Oh!" said Raven. "And you've got him where you want him. And you settle
down and wait for another spell. How long do you generally stay away?"

"Long's I can," she answered simply. "Till I'm afraid baby'll git cold.
I keep his little things where I can ketch 'em up an' run. But sometimes
he 'most gits a chill."

The yearning of anxiety in her voice was intense enough, he thought, to
balance the grief of all the mothers bereft by Herod.

"I don't see," he said, "how you get up here anyway. You must come by
the road? Why doesn't he follow you?"

The slow red surged into her face. She was hesitating. There was
evidently worse to come.

"He gits so mad," she said, with frequent pauses between the words, "he
don't stay in the house after he's had a spell. I guess he don't dare
to. He's afraid of what he'll do. He goes out an' smashes away at the
woodpile or suthin.' An' it's then I ketch up the baby an' run. I go out
the side door an' up the road a piece an' into the back road. Then I
come down the loggin' road the back way an' end up here. It's God's
mercy," she said passionately, "they've broke out that loggin' road or
there wouldn't be any path an' he'd see my tracks in the snow."