photograph, wondering in her heart why it was not
what she had heard them read of God: "A very present help in time of
trouble." If you knew it was so, Tira reasoned, you never had to fret
yourself any more. And if that place was waiting for you--the good place
they talked about--even a long lifetime was not too much to face before
you got to it. After she had laid the book down and turned away from it
to cross the ordered stillness of the room, she stopped, with a sudden
hungry impulse, and opened it at random. "Let not your heart be
troubled," she read, and closed it again, quickly lest the next words
qualify so rich a message. It might say further on that you were not to
be troubled if you fulfilled the law and gospel, and that, she knew, was
only fair. But in her dearth she wanted no sacerdotal bargaining. She
needed the heavens to rain down plenty while she held out her hands to
take. When she entered the kitchen again Tenney, glancing round at her,
saw the change in her look. She was flushed, her mouth was tremulous,
and her eyes humid. He wondered, out of his ready suspicion, whether she
had seen anyone going by.

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

"Nothin's the matter," she answered. But her hands were trembling. She
was like Mary when she had seen her Lord.

"Who's gone by?" he persisted. "I didn't hear no bells."

"No," said Tira. "I don't believe anybody's gone by, except the
choppers. It's a proper nice day for them."

The child woke and cried from the bedroom and she brought him out in the
pink sweetness of his sleep, got the little tub and began to give him
his bath by the fire. As she bent over him and dried his smooth soft
flesh, the passion of motherhood rose in her and she forgot he was "not
right," and sang a low, formless song. When he was bathed she stood him
naked on her knee, and it was then she found Tenney including them both
in the livid look she knew. And she saw what he saw. The child's hair
was more like shining copper every day, his small nose had the tiniest
curve. By whatever trick of nature, which is implacable, he was not like
her, he was not like Tenney. He was a message from her bitter, ignorant
past. Her strong shoulders began to shake and her hands that steadied
the child shook, too, so that he gave a little whimper at finding
himself insecure.

"Isr'el," she broke out, "before God!"

"Well," said he, in the snarl she had heard from him at those times when
his devil qu