“Ye hain't got no excuse,” the soft voice urged; “ye know jes how I feel, how ye'd hev felt, whenst Abs'lom war a baby.” The shawl had fallen back from her tender face; her eyes glowed, her cheek was softly flushed. A sudden terror thrilled through her as she again heard the heavy step approaching in the shed-room. “Whenst Abs'lom war a baby,” she reiterated, her whole pleading heart in the tones. A sudden radiance seemed to illumine the sad, dun-colored folds of the encompassing cloud; her face shone with a transfiguring happiness, for the hustling old crone had handed out to her a warm, somnolent bundle, and the shutter closed upon the mists with a bang. “The wind's riz powerful suddint,” Peter said, noticing the noise as he came stumbling in, rubbing his eyes. He went and fastened the shutter, while his mother tremulously mended the fire. The absence of the baby was not noticed for some time, and when the father's hasty and angry questions elicited the reluctant facts, the outcry for his loss was hardly less bitter among the Kittredges than among the Quimbeys. The fugitives were shielded from capture by the enveloping mist, and when Absalom returned from the search he could do naught but indignantly upbraid his mother. [Illustration: Flung her apron over her head 133] She was terrified by her own deed, and cowered under Absalom's wrath. It was in a moral collapse, she felt, that she could have done this thing. She flung her apron over her head, and sat still and silent--a monumental figure--among them. Once, roused by Absalom's reproaches, she made some effort to defend and exculpate herself, speaking from behind the enveloping apron. “I ain't born no Kittredge nohow,” she irrelevantly asseverated, “an' I never war. An' when Eveliny axed me how I'd hev liked ter hev another 'oman take Abs'lom whenst he war a baby, I couldn't hold out no longer.” “Shucks!” cried Absalom, unfilially; “ye'd aheap better be a-studyin' 'bout'n my good now 'n whenst I war a baby--a-givin' away _my_ child ter them Quimbeys; a-h'istin' him out'n the winder!” She was glad to retort that he was “impident,” and to take refuge in an aggrieved silence, as many another mother has done when outmatched by logic. After this there was more cheerfulness in her hidden face than might have been argued from her port of important sorrow. “Bes' ter hev no jawin', though,” she said to herself, as she sat thus inscrutably veiled. And deep in her repentant heart she was contradictorily glad that Evelina and the baby were safe together down in the Cove. *****