curtly. "You're to get the child and come
to my house for the night."

"Will he"--and now he saw her mind was with Tenney--"will he be
arrested?"

"I hope," Raven allowed himself the bitterness of saying, "I hope he'll
get imprisonment for life."

And there was such sternness in the kind voice that Tira turned and
went, half running, up the path to the back road and home.

That night at eleven, when the house had quieted, and Raven was alone in
the library, he permitted himself a glimpse at the denied emotional
aspect of the day. Jerry had got quickly to the top of the hill and Dick
had been moved down without disaster, Tenney, white-faced and
bewildered, lending his strength as he was told. Raven called upon him
for this and that, and kept him by them on the way down to the house, so
that Tira might have time to snatch the child and hurry away. At the
moment of nearing the house he remembered her, and that if Tenney went
directly back by the high road, he might meet her.

"Here!" This to Tenney, who was sagging on behind the sled, and who at
once hurried along to his side. "Go back to the hut and see if I've left
the key in the door. If it's there, you can lock up and bring it down to
me. If it isn't, don't come back."

Then, he assumed, Tenney would go home by the back road, the shortest
route. For he would not find the key, which was still in Raven's pocket.
Tenney looked at him, seemed to have something to say, and finally
managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and
his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but
he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven
ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding
that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the
attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven,
with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him
now, caught up a stick lying in the dooryard and tossed it to him.

"Here!" said he. "That'll do for a cane."

Tenney could not catch; he was too stupid from bewilderment of mind. But
he picked it up, and went limping off across the road and up the hill.
Then the women had to be told, and when Jerry brought the horses to a
standstill at the door, Raven ran in, pushing Charlotte aside--dear
Charlotte! she was too used to life and death to need palliatives of
indirection in breaking even such news as t