"Then I went out an' put oranges all around the boy brother on the hall floor, an' I hustled back downstairs. "'Gentlemen,' says I, brisk, 'I've got two dollars too much,' says I--an' I reck'n the cracks in them walls must 'a' winked at the notion. 'What do you say to a game o' dice on the bread-plate?' I ask' 'em. "Well, one way an' another I kep' them two there for two hours. An' then, when the game was out, I knew I couldn't do nothin' else. So I stood up an' told 'em I'd go up an' let Mr. Loneway know they was there--along o' his wife bein' sick an' hadn't ought to be scared. "I started up the stairs, feelin' like lead. Little more'n halfway up I heard a little noise. I looked up, an' I see the boy brother a-comin', leakin' orange-peel, with the kid slung over his shoulder, sleepin'. I looked on past him, an' the door o' Mr. Loneway's sittin' room was open, an' I see Mr. Loneway standin' in the middle o' the floor. I must 'a' stopped still, because something stumbled up against me from the back, an' the two constables was there, comin' close behind me. I could hear one of 'em breathin'. "Then I went on up, an' somehow I knew there wasn't nothin' more to wait for. When we got to the top I see inside the room, an' she was layin' back on her pillow, all still an' quiet. An' the little new pink jacket never moved nor stirred, for there wa'n't no breath. "Mr. Loneway, he come acrost the floor towards us. "'Come in,' he says. 'Come right in,' he told us--an' I see him smilin' some." XIV AN EPILOGUE When Peleg had gone back to the woodshed, Calliope slipped away too. I sat beside the fire, listening to the fine, measured fall of Peleg's axe--so much more vital with the spirit of music than his flute; looking at Calliope's brown earthen baking dishes--so much purer in line than the village bric-a-brac; thinking of Peleg's story and of the life that beat within it as life does not beat in the unaided letter of the law. But chiefly I thought of Linda Loneway. Linda Loneway. I made a picture of her name. So, Calliope having come from above stairs where I had heard her moving about as if in some search, I think that I recognized, even before I lifted my eyes to it, the photograph which she gave me. It was as if the name had heard me, and had come. "It's Linda," Calliope said. "It's Linda Proudfit. An' I'm certain, certain sure it's the Linda that Peleg knew." "Surely not, Calliope," I said--obedient to some law. Calliope nodded, with closed eyes, in simple certainty. "I _know_ it was her that Peleg meant about," she said. "I thought of it first when he said about her looks--an' her husband a clerk--an' he said he called her Linda. An' then when he got to where she mentioned Aunt Nita--that's what her an' Clementina always calls Mis' Ordway, though she ain't by rights--oh, it is--it is...."