That, he saw, was wise, and they went out into the road, waited a moment for the sleighs just starting, and then walked away from home. Some of the people were singing "camp-meeting hymns," and there was one daring burst of "Good night, ladies," and a chorused laugh. Prayer-meeting at Tenney's was not, Raven concluded, regarded much more seriously than Charlotte had foreseen. The bells jingled off into the distance. The horses were bent on home. As if the sound only had torn up the night into shreds of commotion, so now the bits of silence drew together into a web and the web covered them. Nan, in spite of the perplexed question of Tira, could have settled under the web, there with Raven, as under wings. But he was hot with impatience. They had gone half a mile perhaps, when he stopped. "Come back," he said. "I've got to know." Nan turned with him and they went on in silence but very fast. Once or twice she was about asking him not to take such long steps, but she set her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve. "Come on," he said. "I'll take you home and then come back." Again Nan stepped out in time. No use, she thought, to beg him to let her come, too. But she could come back. Women were useful, she knew, with their implied terrors and fragility, in holding up certain sorts of horror. Nan was willing to fight, if need were, with all the weapons of her sex. In the road in front of her own house, was Charlotte, waiting for them. Nan left Raven, put a hand on Charlotte's arm, and called her "Ducky." "You won't come in?" she said to Raven. "Don't you think you'd better. Half an hour or so?" "Not a minute," said Raven. "Good night." He left them and after a few striding steps was aware of Charlotte, calling him. She came up and spoke his name. "I've just met that woman." "What woman?" he asked impatiently. "Tira Tenney. With the baby. This time o' night." "Where?" "Front o' the house, just as I come out." "Then she was coming there," he burst forth. "Too bad! too bad! Didn't you know that? Didn't you ask her in?" "Yes," said Charlotte, "I asked her in an' she said no, she was goin' down along. An' I stood an' watched her an' she turned off up the rise into the woods." So it had begun, the terror, the flight. She was going to the hut and, for some reason, not the back way. "There's somethin' 'tain't right," Charlotte was beginning, but he seized her wrist and held it. To keep her attention, or to feel the touch of something kindly and warm? "Yes," he said, "something's wrong. Don't tell, Charlotte. Not a word--not to Nan or Jerry or--above all not to Tenney. I'll see to it." He left her and hurried loping along the road, almost at a run, and Charlotte went in to Nan. XXI