as the house, rather narrow in build, but painted white, with
green blinds. The narrowness gave it a look of unwelcoming meagerness,
this although it was of a good size. Raven wondered why some minds ran
to pointed roofs, inhospitable to the eye. This looked to him like
Tenney, his idea of him. The barn was spacious, and beautiful in silver
gray, and the woodpile, Raven decided ironically, a marvel of artistic
skill. He had never seen such a big woodpile, so accurately trimmed at
the corners, so perfect in the face of an extended length. It must, he
judged, represent a good many hours of jealous madness, if it was
entirely the product of those outbreaks when Tenney went out to smash
wood. And there, round one corner of the pile, was Tenney himself. Raven
realized that he had not expected to find him. Actually he had believed
the man was raging over snowy hillsides somewhere about, armed with his
axe and uttering those catamount cries. Tenney was not at work. He was
standing perfectly still, looking up the road.

"Hullo!" called Raven, turning into the yard, and the man jerked back a
step and then stopped and awaited him.

It was not a step actually. His feet did not leave the ground. He
merely, his whole body, seemed thrown out of position, to recover
instantly. Raven, watching him as he traversed the few steps between
them, decided that he was uncontrollably nervous, frightened, too,
perhaps, at what his apprehensive mind pictured: and that was good for
him. What was Tenney, according to his look? Raven, scrutinizing him as
he approached, determined to know something more than he had caught from
those preoccupied minutes in the woods. How, if he had his pen in hand,
would he describe Israel Tenney for one of the folk tales Anne had so
persistently urged him to? A thin, tall man with narrow shoulders and
yet somehow giving an impression of great wiry strength. He had a boldly
drawn line of profile, hair black and glossy and, as Raven saw with
distaste, rather long under his hat, vertical lines marking his cheeks,
lines deeper than seemed justified by his age, and, as he had noted
before, his eyes were also black with a spark in them. What was the
spark? It was, Raven concluded again, in this quick scrutiny, like that
in the eyes of inventors and visionaries. He wore clothes so threadbare
that it seemed as if he must have been cold. But they were patched with
a scrupulous nicety that made some revulsion in Raven rise up