sloping roofed
compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the
boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as
the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured
in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed
so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting
it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She
should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if
he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight
falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the
wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling
suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew
that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had
come for her at last.

Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her
head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed
her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will!
Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet
stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the
soap-suds under the trestle.

The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining
room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one
tiny finger in his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to
disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.

An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he
tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in
their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was
something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it
had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw
the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift
the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought
his huge burly frame over the threshold.

"Well, Annie, my girl,