creatur's and hear 'em rattlin' round the
stanchils till they see the hay afore 'em."

"Never mind," said Raven. "I'll do it to-day." Then a thought struck
him. "I wonder," he said, "who Tenney leaves to do his chores."

"Why," said Charlotte, "I s'pose she does 'em, same's I do when I'm
alone. 'Tain't no great of a job, 'specially if the hay's pitched round
beforehand."

Raven, sitting down to his breakfast, thought it a good deal of a task
for a woman made for soft, kind ways with children and the small
domestic animals by the hearth. And then he did have the humor to laugh
at himself a little. It showed how she had unconsciously beguiled him,
how she had impressed him with her curious implication of belonging to
things afar from this world of homespun usages. She was strong and
undeniably homespun herself, in every word and look. Let her fodder the
cattle. Perhaps they would add to the lonesome tranquillity of her day,
with their needs and their sweet-breathed satisfactions.

XIII

For a week it was hard, clear weather, with a crystal sky and no wind.
Tenney appeared in the early mornings and he and Jerry went off to their
chopping. Raven's relief grew. By the last of the week he found his
apprehension really lessening. Every hour of her safety gave him new
reassurance, and he could even face the nights, the long hours when
Tenney was at home. Tenney he took pains not to meet. He distinctly
objected to being pressed into a corner by the revivalist cant of a man
he could not wisely offend. Nor did he see her whom he called "the
woman." Sometimes in the early dusk after Tenney had got home, he was
strongly moved to walk past the house and see if their light looked
cheerful, or if he could hear the sound of voices within. Smile at
himself as he might, at the childishness of the fancy, he alternately
thought of her as being pursued out of the house by a madman with an axe
and exhorted to save herself by the blood of the Lamb. And, Tenney being
what he was, the last was almost as disquieting as the actual torment.
Every morning he went up to the hut to find no slightest sign of her
having been there. If he stayed long enough to build a fire, he went
back, after it had time to die, and laid another, so that she might
light it without delay.

On the Saturday night of that week the wind veered into the east and the
clouds banked up. The air had a grayness that meant snow. He had been up
at the hut all the aft