about her he called "the woman" in his
mind. She would not slip. She was as perfectly adapted in every tempered
muscle to the rough conditions of natural life as the pioneer women who
helped their men clear the wilderness and set hearthstones. It darkened
between the firs and they began to stir a little, as if a wind were
coming up, and he turned back home, again growing uneasy about her, shut
up there with her tormentor and walled about by the dark.

He had his supper early, and he did not again invite Charlotte and Jerry
to eat with him. Now, he felt, he should need all the solitude he could
get to think out this thing he seemed to have taken upon himself, and
keep a grip on his anxiety. After supper he asked Charlotte for blankets
and a pillow. She did not look at him, but he was clearly aware that she
was worried and would not let him read it in her eyes.

"It's all right, Charlotte," he assured her. "I just want some things up
there at the hut, for the couch, that's all."

"You ain't goin' to sleep up there, be you?" she asked quietly.
Charlotte, he knew, had felt his mood. She saw he was on edge.

"No," he said, "I shall be right back. Only I want to get them up there.
To-morrow I shall be carrying books and things."

She got the blankets without a word, venturing only, as she gave them to
him:

"Jerry'll be as mad as fire with me for not sendin' him up to lug 'em."

Raven smiled at her and went off with his load. He carried also his
electric torch, and traversing the dark between the moving trees,
creaking now and complaining, at the door of the hut he flashed on the
light and lifted the stone. The key was there. That gave him a momentary
relief. She had understood and done her part toward his task of
defending her. He went in, tossed the things over a chair, and lighted
one of the candles on the mantel. The hearth was cold and he piled logs
and kindling. Then he put the pillow in its place on the couch and
spread the blankets. That was to show her she was to make herself
comfortable. The match-box he placed on the mantel, where it seemed
likely her hand would touch it, if she thought to feel there, and beside
it his torch. It might be a momentary defence against the impalpable
terrors of the night. But he was not sure she would feel any terrors,
save of the defined and tangible. That he considered absorbedly as he
went down the path after placing the key under the stone. It was not
that she was insensiti