t might have blown
there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and,
seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped
away from him.

"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My God!
don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got
his axe."

But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned
away.

"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took
to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by----"

She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house
and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes
since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She
was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira
was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes
in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't
suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her
eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer
proposition, a woman was, anyways.

Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window,
still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her
and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes
on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood
there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to
the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost
him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the
child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not
heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for
him on earth: his mother's arms.

All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the
window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the
sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she
to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement
of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder,
told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper,
could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to
through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more
horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last
inevitable set