to it, passed
him without a look, and came in. He shut the door and followed her.
Raven got up from his chair and stood, glancing at her with what he
hoped was a casual attention. Tenney came back and, when she had thrown
off the blanket, took it from her hand and dropped it on a chair. He was
all trembling eagerness. That act, the relieving her of the blanket, was
incredible to Raven. The man had wanted to kill her (or, at the least,
to kill his child), and he was humbly inducting her into the comforts of
her home. She had not looked toward Raven. With a decorum finer, he
thought, than his own, she would not play the game of diplomacy. She
knew him and she could not deny him, even to save her life. Suddenly
Tenney, brushing past to draw up a chair for her at the stove, became
aware of him. Raven believed that, up to the moment, he had, to the
man's absorbed gaze, been invisible. Now Tenney seemed to recognize the
decencies toward even an unbidden guest.

"She's all beat out," he said, in uncouth apology. "It's my woman."

Raven turned to her, waiting for her cue. Would she take a hand at the
game, as it imposed itself on him? Her silence and aloofness were his
answer. She was sitting forward in her chair, to get the baby's feet
nearer the warmth. But since she would not speak, Raven did.

"I should think any one would be beat out, a night like this," he said,
as casually as he could manage, "carrying a baby, too, in such a storm.
You'd better be careful of the child, at least," he added curtly,
turning to Tenney, "if you want to keep him. Out in this cold and sleet!
You don't want their deaths on your hands, do you?"

Tenney stared back at him in a wildness of apprehension.

"Be you a doctor?" he managed to ask.

Raven remembered the words: "Their tongue cleaved to the roof of their
mouth." That seemed to be what Tenney's tongue was doing now.

"No," said he, "I'm not a doctor, but I've seen a good deal of sickness
in the War. Get them warm," he added authoritatively, "both of them. Put
the child into warm water."

"Yes," said Tenney, in an anguished sort of haste. Then to his wife he
continued, in a humility Raven noted as her best guaranty of at least
temporary safety, "I'll bring you the foot tub, an' whilst you're doin'
it, I'll warm the bed."

"Yes," she said quietly, but with a composure of mastery in her voice.
"So do."

Raven got up and made his way to the door. Then he bethought himself
that he had