and half a groan of
protest. For one brief moment Dinky-Dunk stared at her, almost
accusingly, I thought. Then he swung his horse savagely about, and
called out over our heads. Other horsemen, I found, had come loping up
in the ghostly twilight where we stood. I could see the breath from
their mounts' nostrils, white in the frosty air.

"You, Teetzel, and you, O'Malley," called my husband, in an oddly
authoritative and barking voice, "and you on the roan there, swing
twenty paces out from one another and circle the shack. Then widen the
circle, each turn. There's no use calling, for the boy'll be down.
He'll be done out. But don't speak until you see something. And for
the love of God, watch close. He's not three yet, remember. He
couldn't have got far away!"

I should have found something reassuring in those quick and purposeful
words of command, but they only served to bring the horror of the
situation closer home to me. They brought before me more graphically
than ever the thought that I'd been trying to get out of my head, the
picture of a huddled small body, with a tear-washed face, growing
colder and colder, until the solitary little flame of life went
completely out in the midst of that star-strewn darkness. Only too
willingly, I knew, I would have covered that chilling body with the
warmth of my own, though wild horses rode over me until the end of
time. I tried to picture life without Dinkie. I tried to imagine my
home without that bright and friendly little face, without the patter
of those restless little feet, without the sound of those beleaguering
little coos of child-love with which he used to burrow his head into
the hollow of my shoulder.

It was too much for me. I had to lean against the wagon-wheel and
gulp. It was Lady Alicia, emerging from the shack, who brought me back
to the world about me. I could just see her as she stood beside me,
for night had fallen by this time, night nearly as black as the
blackness of my own heart.

"Look here," she said almost gruffly. "Whatever happens, you've got to
have something to drink. I've got a kettle on, and I'm going back to
make tea, or a pot of coffee, or whatever I can find."

"Tea?" I echoed, as the engines of indignation raced in my shaken
body. "Tea? It sounds pretty, doesn't it, sitting down to a pink tea,
when there's a human being dying somewhere out in that darkness!"

My bitterness, however, had no visible effect on Lady Alicia.

"Perhaps c