d in Anne Hamilton. "We won't discuss Nan."

Now it was Raven's turn to gape, but on the heels of it, seeing the
neatness of the thrust, he smiled.

"Right, boy," he said. "Good for you. We won't discuss Nan, and we won't
discuss Tira. But you'll hold your tongue about this business, and if
you find me opening the door of my house at midnight, you'll remember
it's my business, and keep your mouth shut. Now I'm going up the hill to
see she's safe, and if you follow me, in your general policy of keeping
on my trail, I don't quite know what will happen. But something will--to
one of us."

He got up, went into the hall and found his cap and leather jacket. Dick
meantime stood in the library door regarding him from so troubled a mind
that Raven halted and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Cut it out, boy," he said, "all this guardian angel business. You let
me alone and I'll let you alone. We're both decent chaps, but when you
begin with your psychotherapy and that other word I don't know how to
pronounce----"

Dick, having, at this period of his life only an inactive sense of
humor, mechanically supplied it: "Psychiatry."

"What a beast of a word! Yes, that's it. Well, they're red rags to me,
all these gadgets out of the half-baked mess they've stirred up by
spying on our insides. I can't be half decent to you. But I want to be.
I want us to be decent to each other. It's damnable if we can't. Go to
bed, and I'll run up and see if poor Tira's safe."

He did not wait for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick
heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an
intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of
mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England
tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the
road he stopped and completed the first half of the ascent in silence.
Then, as the whistle might mean something reassuring to Tira, he began
again with a bright loudness, bold as the oriole's song. He reached the
hut, whistling up to the very door, and then his breath failed him on a
note, the place looked so forbiddingly black in the shadow, the woods
were so still. It did not seem possible that a woman's warm heart was
beating inside there, Tira's heart, home of loves unquenchable. He put
his hand down under the stone. The key was there, and rising, he felt
his mind heavy with reproaches of her. She had gone back to Tenney. The
nig