ith moss patches
on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and
tumbling: always the sound of falling water.

"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy
tribe, shif'less."

"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there,
before she married."

"That's where we go, is it?"

"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from
getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old
Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old
Moosewood----" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she
was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of
Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead.

If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have
told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where
the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve
and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path
that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out
without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and
she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to
say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on
one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling
them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank,
and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and
waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his
arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took
all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in shore, carrying her, and
walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid
Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath,
not looking at her, not looking at Nan.

"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was
the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they
live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll
hold her. You drive."

He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her,
and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on
to the Donnyhills'.

All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well
to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like
him