on, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, had given up
the losing battle, turned sulkily and left them alone.

They were hungry and in high spirits, and they ate and talked a great
deal. Nan meant to remember what they talked about. Even the words were
so dear to her she would have liked to set them down in a book to keep
for her old age that was to be as desolate as Aunt Anne's. But it
shouldn't be as conventional. There should be waves on that sea. Then
Charlotte had come in to clear the table and afterward, by Raven's
invitation, sat ten minutes or so by the fire and talked of neighborhood
things, and they were left alone again, and he was suddenly grave. Was
the game over, Nan wondered, and then went on into a more unbridled
speculation whether he was finding himself reminded of the old scruples,
the old withholdings when Aunt Anne, unable to keep up with their
galloping horses of fun, restrained them delicately but with what a hand
of steel! And suddenly she realized he was not thinking of her. Was the
grim house over the rise of the road calling to his anxious heart?

"Nan," he said, as if he had suddenly made up his mind, "I've got
something to show you."

He left the room and she heard him running upstairs. Presently he was
back, carrying the mottled book. Instantly it had a vivid interest for
her, he held it so reverently and, it seemed, so tenderly. She was at
the fire and he told her to get up and take the other chair. It would
bring the light at her back. With the book still in his hand, he sat
down before the fire and began to tell her the story of Old Crow. Nan
had known it, in its outer eccentricities; but had Old Crow been
unhappy? That was new to her. She had heard of him as queer, the country
oddity who, being frenzied over God or love, had madly incarcerated
himself in the loneliness of his own eccentricity.

"At odds with life as he found it," Raven concluded, "not actually able
to bear it. That's how it looked to the rest of us. Now, this is how it
looked to him."

"Is it a journal?" Nan asked.

She had forgotten her game. She was no child now, but a serious woman
with an intensely frowning glance.

"Yes. This is his journal. Want to read it, or me read it to you?"

"Oh, you," said Nan.

"I'd better, I guess. His punctuation's queer, and so's his spelling
sometimes. But I wish I could write as good a fist."

So he began. Nan sat perfectly still while the reading lasted. Once
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