ar an unexpected sound: blows, loud and
regular, wood on wood. When he had passed the turning by the three firs
he knew, really before his eyes confirmed it. Tenney was there at the
hut, and he had a short but moderately large tree trunk--almost heavier
than he could manage--and was using it as a battering ram. He was
breaking down the door. Raven, striding on, shouted, but he was close at
hand before Tenney was aware of him and turned, breathless, letting the
log fall. He had actually not heard, and Raven's presence seemed to take
him aback. Yet he was in no sense balked of his purpose. He faced about,
breathless from his lifting and ramming, and Raven saw how intense was
the passion in him: witnessed by the whiteness of his face, the burning
of his eyes.

"I come up here," said Tenney, "after my gun. You can git it for me an'
save your door."

Raven paid no attention to this.

"You'd better come along down," he said. "We'll stop at my house and
talk things over."

This he offered in that futile effort the herald of bad news inevitably
makes, to approach it slowly.

"Then," said Tenney, "you hand me out my gun. I don't leave here till I
have my gun."

"Tenney," said Raven, "I've got bad news for you."

"Yes," said Tenney blankly. "She's run away. You carried her off this
mornin'. You don't need to tell me that."

"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for
he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to
Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she
was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping
stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was
drowned."

Tenney's eyes had shifted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of
them, and they clung blankly to the tree spaces and the distance.

"Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it
amongst ye."

"We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?"

"No," said Tenney.

"Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to.
It's all led to that."

"She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could,
off those wet stones."

"You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun."

But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably
what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the
baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't s