that resolve not to go in.

"I suppose," said Raven, after a little, to recall him, "the milk is in
there."

"Yes," said Tenney. "I s'pose 'tis."

"It isn't strained, you know. What do you mean to do about it?"

"Do?" said Tenney. "Let it set."

Again they loitered, back and forth, sometimes on one side of the
woodpile, sometimes the other, each with a pretense of finding the
woodpile itself a point of interest. Suddenly Tenney ceased his foolish
walk up and down.

"Look here," said he, "should you jest as lieves go in?"

"Yes," said Raven. "Only you'd better come with me. Get it over. You've
got to go into your own house."

"What I want," said Tenney, "is a blue apron, blue with white specks. I
don't believe it's there, but if 'tis I want it."

To Raven, this was not strange. It was Tira's apron he wanted, something
that belonged to her, to touch, perhaps to carry about with him as a
reminder of the warmth and kindliness that lay in everything she owned.
Blue! that was her Madonna color. No wonder Tenney remembered it, if it
was blue.

"It ain't hangin' up," said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to
cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with
t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe--my God in
heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the
cover o' the kitchen stove. You look there an' see if you can't find the
leastest scrid. Blue, you remember, all folded up."

Raven went into the kitchen where the pails of milk were on the table,
waiting. He took off the stove cover and looked in, still an idle
compliance, to quiet the man's mind. It was like an outcome to a dream.
For there it was, a soft disorder easily indicating burned cloth, and
one shred of blue, a piece perhaps an inch and a half square, hemmed on
three sides: the end of an apron string. He took this carefully out, and
stood there looking at it a tense moment, as if it could summon Tira
back to tell him what it meant; look out his pocketbook, laid it in, and
put the pocketbook away. Then he went back to Tenney.

"You were right," he said. "She burned it up."

Tenney stared at him for what seemed a long time.

"Oh," he said, as if it had been Raven who suggested it, "so she burnt
it up. Wa'n't there any left--not a scrid?"

"Yes," said Raven, "there was. What do you want of it?"

"Nothin'," said Tenney. "No, I don't want it. If 'twas the whole on't I
shouldn't want it