ment. In the little she had said to Raven, he
had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in
finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin',"
she said. "He give me warnin'."

"Warning?"

"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin'
round in this snow.'"

Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in
their care for her.

"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an'
turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I
dunno.'"

"Why didn't you?" asked Raven.

"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew
if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he--broke in the
door."

Raven could only look at her.

"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so,
somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door."

"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words
really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them.

"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked
it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was
there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd
give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply.
"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n'
over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd
answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my
favor, far as I can see."

The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him
such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous
plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world
of his hopes for her.

"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me.
Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with
yourself."

"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he
should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby."

This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both
to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the
child. He returned to his old grave way with her.

"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you
won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got
Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't