tate, but the wounded
foot, he knew, was bettering every day, and with it Tira's security
lessened. Jerry's dismissal from the chores had troubled him so much
that he had gone up, immediately after, to reason with Tenney. But
Tenney was entering the barn door at the moment of his turning into the
yard, and Tira, following, stopped an instant and made Raven a little
gesture that seemed to him one of hasty dismissal, and he went back home
again.

"Jack," said Dick, this morning in the hut--it was as if he had to
speak--"what are you getting this place ready for, and breaking out the
back road? You don't need to come up here, in weather like this. If you
do, you've got your snowshoes. What the deuce are you breaking out for?"

Raven stood a moment looking down at Tira's fire. It seemed a sacred
pile, consecrated to holy use. What would Dick say if he told him the
paths had been broken for a woman's flying feet, the fire was laid to
warm her when she came here hunted by man's cruelty? Dick was said to
have written some very strong verse, but how if he found himself up
against life itself?

"It's a jolly old place," Raven said, rousing himself out of his musing.
"As for breaking out, that's what oxen are for."

Dick was looking at him in a manifest concern. It was true affection.
The boy might find it difficult to hail him across the interval of years
between them, but he did love old Jack, though with the precise measure
of patronage due the old.

"You know," said Dick, "it worries me like the deuce to see you coming
up here like----"

He paused as if the matter were too complex to be gone into lightly.

"Like what?" Raven asked him.

"Well, we've been over that. You know who built this. You know what he
did in it. He brought an old rip up here to live with him, and--oh,
confound it, Jack! don't pretend you don't even remember old Crow."

"Yes," said Raven gravely, "I remember Old Crow."

"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "he was a family disgrace, and the less said
about him the better."

"I showed you, the night you came," said Raven, "the story of Old Crow's
life. You didn't quite catch on. Want another try at it?"

Dick had to search his memory. The only thing he had kept in mind about
that night was his anger against Nan. There was a book, he recalled
vaguely: some sort of stuff in a crabbed hand.

"Old Crow?" he said. "Old Crow never wrote anything."

"You think," said Raven, "he brought his bum up here and