"Well, let ’em pass and look in, too," Ann retorted. "I’d a sight rather they’d pass and see you here in open candle-light than to have the door of my house closed with us two behind it. Huh!" "Well," he said, a blear in his big, weary eyes, "you know best, I reckon. I admit I don’t go deep into such matters. It’s sorter funny to see you so particular, though, and with—with _me_." He walked to the fire and mechanically held out his hands to the warmth. Then, with his back to the red glow, he stood awkwardly, his eyes on the floor. After a pause, he said, suddenly: "If you don’t mind, Ann, I’d rather set down. I’m tired to death, nearly, from that blasted long ride. Coming down-hill for five or six miles on a slow, stiff-jointed hoss is heavy on a man as old as I am." She reached behind her and gave him a chair, but refused to sit down herself, standing near him as he sank into the chair; and, quite in his old way, she noticed he thrust out his pitifully ill-shod feet to the flames and clasped his hair-grown hands in his lap—that, too, in the old way, but with added feebleness. "You said it was about the child," Ann reminded him. "Ain’t she well?" "Oh yes, she’s well an’ hearty," Boyd made haste to reply. "I reckon you may think it’s odd fer me to ride away over here, but, Ann, I’m a man that feels like I want to do my full duty if I can in this life, and I’ve been bothering a lots here lately—a lots. I’ve lost sleep over a certain delicate matter, but nothing I kin do seems to help me out. It’s a thing, you see, that I couldn’t well ask advice on, and so I had to tussle with it in private. Finally I thought I’d just ride over and lay the whole thing before you." "Well, what is it?" Ann asked. "It’s about the hardest thing to talk about that I ever tried to approach," Boyd said, with lowered glance, "but I reckon I’ll have to get it out and be done with it, one way or another. You see, Ann, when the law gave me the custody of the child I was a younger man, with more outlook and health and management, in the judgment of the court, than I’ve got now, and I thought that what I couldn’t do for my own flesh and blood nobody else could, and so I took her off." "_Yes, you took her off!_" Ann straightened up, and a sneer touched her set features; there was a sarcastic, almost triumphant cry of vindictiveness in her tone.