she asked, against her will, and he was
silent for what seemed so long, that she pursued: "You goin' rabbitin'?"

"No," said Tenney. "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down
four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll do well enough for me."

Again he glanced up at her and her look of frozen horror evidently
warned him against terrifying her unduly. She must be shaken enough to
obey him, not to fight.

"You look kinder peaked," he said, with what she found a false air of
interest. "You don't git out enough. Mebbe you'd ought to git out
nights. I've been noticin' how peaked you look, an' I thought mebbe I'd
git the old musket loaded up an' go out an' shoot ye a pa'tridge. Tempt
your appetite, mebbe, a mite o' the breast."

"I dunno," said Tira, speaking with difficulty through her rigid misery,
"as you'd ought to, so near nestin' time. I dunno's as it's the season
to kill."

"All seasons are the same to me," said Tenney. "When it's time to kill,
then kill, I say. Kill!"

He spoke the word as if he loved it, and Tira walked away from him into
the bedroom, and stretched herself on the bed, her hand on the sleeping
child. When it was time to get dinner she came out again and found him
reading his paper by the stove. He had set the gun away in a corner. But
directly after dinner he shaved at the little glass by the kitchen
window and told her, again with the air of abundant explanation she
found foreign to him, that he was going to the street, to get the colt
shod. The colt did need to be shod. She knew that. Perhaps this time he
was actually going.

"You want to take along the eggs?" she said, and he assented.

He asked her, too, for a list of groceries she needed. He would have to
wait his turn at the blacksmith's. He might be a long time. She need not
expect him before dark. She might as well go out, he told her, and
again:

"You're lookin' peaked. You need the air."

She heard him drive briskly out of the yard, but she would not, for some
reason she did not herself know, go to the window to look after him. It
was all a plan, she told herself. She was not to be taken in by it. She
would force herself to sit down to her sewing. She would not leave the
house while he was gone. If he wanted to tempt her out, to trap her, let
him have his will. It was better, she thought, with a moment's satirical
comment, for him to be driving off on a fictitious mission than roaming
the neighborhood with a gun in his hand. Sh