ok up the reins and drove away. Tira
watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his
coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was
somehow--different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast
and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and
smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came
on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about
the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour
she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She
smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and
told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had
looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the
bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The
little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only
the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying
crookedly near the top. She snatched up the pillow. There was the little
coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face,
carefully folded into a square, was her apron, the one Eugene Martin had
torn away from her. The baby was dead.

XLIII

Tenney did not come home until two o'clock. When he drove into the yard
he found Tira there, standing on the step. This was a day of clear
sunlight, like that of yesterday, and the breeze moved her light rings
of hair. Tenney glanced at her once, but, saying nothing, got out and
began to unharness. Tira stood waiting. He led the horse into the barn,
and when he came out and walked toward the house she was still waiting,
a woman without breath even, one might have thought. When he was perhaps
three feet from her she spoke, but in a quiet voice:

"Stop! You stan' right there an' I'll tell you. The doctor's been. I
'phoned him. I told him I overlaid the baby."

"Overlaid?" muttered Tenney, in a puzzled way.

Now a little feeling did manifest itself in her voice, as if he must be
a fool not to have known these tragedies that come to mothers.

"Overlaid," she repeated, with the slightest tinge of scorn. "That's
what women do sometimes, big heavy women! Roll over on the little
creatur's an' lay on 'em so 't they can't breathe. I s'pose they can't
help it, though. They're tired. I told him I done that. He was sorry for
me. I asked him if the crowner'd come, an' I'd have to