The night before, at supper, Mrs. Dilworth, her hands stumbling among her teacups, said, faintly, "I'm going over to the other side of the river to-morrow to order some chickens from Mrs. Kensy." "That Kensy house is right by the railroad station," Ned said, scowling; "I don't believe she has any hens." "Yes, she has, Neddy," said Mrs. Dilworth. Edwin frowned blackly. "I do wish you wouldn't call me by that absurd name, mother." "I keep forgetting, Neddy dear." Edwin held up his hands despairingly. "What are you two people talking about?" demanded Thomas. "I'm going to walk over, across the ice, to the Bend, to-morrow," said Milly. "Walk!" her husband protested. "What do you walk for? It's cold as Greenland on the ice, and, besides, they were cutting at the pool by the Bend; you don't want to go that way, Milly. Take the stage round." Mrs. Dilworth crumbled a piece of bread with shaking fingers, and said nothing. "What time are you going, mother?" inquired Edwin. "In the afternoon, about four." "Why, you went there only two days ago," Edwin said, irritably. "I saw you on the back road carting a big bundle." "It would have been more to the point if you'd done the carting for your mother," Tom Dilworth said, sharply. His wife paled suddenly at that word about a bundle, but the subject was not pursued. Edwin said, grumbling, that he didn't see what possessed his mother to choose such an hour. "It's too dark for a lady to be out," Edwin protested. "Too dark for a--_grandmother_!" his father said. "Don't you criticise your mother, young man." And then he added: "Look out for the places where the men were cutting, Milly. It hasn't frozen over yet." And Mrs. Dilworth said, after a pause, "I know." That night was a misery of dreams that the deed was done, broken by wakings desperate with the knowledge that it was yet to do. In the morning she seemed to have lost all power of words; she bore her husband's reproaches that Ned was late for breakfast; she went about her household duties; she watched the girls start for school (she did not kiss them; demonstrations of affection had never been possible to this dumb breast; but she stared after them with haggard eyes); and through it all she hardly uttered a word; when she did speak, it seemed as though she had to break, by agonizing effort, some actual lock upon her lips. When the girls had gone she looked about for her eldest; but Ned was not to be found. "I never knew him to go to the store before breakfast," she thought, miserably. His father, pulling on his coat in the hall, said that Ned was getting industrious to go to his work so early! His wife was silent. When he started, whistling cheerfully, [Illustration: music fragment] she watched him from the window, straining her eyes until he was out of sight. Then she went up-stairs to her bedroom, and, opening his closet door, leaned her head against one of his coats, trembling very much.