course he can. We'll be down to breakfast, tell
Charlotte."

Tenney offered no preference or opinion. He sat there, his key--the key
Tira had lost, he did remember vaguely--on the table before him. Nan,
with the air of there being no more to do, wafted Dick away with her.
And Raven and Tenney spent the night together in the hut. Raven did not
sleep. He had an impression that Tenney did not, either. It seemed to
him a watch with the dead.

XLV

In that darkest minute when it seems as if dawn will never come or, if
it does, to bring with it a deeper chill, Raven, for the first time in
weeks, found his old enemies upon him: the fear of life, the terrible
distaste for continuance in a world where there is no escape, even in
going on. Was this grief for Tira? Her needs had pulled him out from his
own sickness of mind, and now that she would never need anything again,
must he return to the dark dwelling of his mental discontent and crouch
there whimpering as Tenney had whimpered when he came to him here a few
hours ago? And slowly, achingly, his mind renewedly accepted the iron
necessity which is living. There was no giving up. There was no escape.
He had to live because the other choice--was it the fool's choice or the
coward's?--was not only unthinkable, but it did no good. There was no
escape. And side by side with the sickness of distaste for life as he
found it, was another distaste, as strong: for this malady of nostalgia
itself. He could not abide it another instant. It was squalid, it was
unclean, and he found his mind crying out: "Help me! for God's sake help
me!" But it was not to God he cried. It was to Old Crow. And Old Crow
heard. Indubitably he heard. For there was an answer. "Yes! yes!" the
answer kept beating in his mind. He would help.

And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or
would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she
had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right
taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had
her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as
simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear
to face her life with Tenney--the hurtling, blind, elemental creature
with blood on his hands--that she took herself away? No. Tira was no
such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more
terrible the challenge, responded the more valian