He stared at her a long moment, puzzling instances accumulating in his mind, evidences that the child was not like other children he had seen. Then he began to laugh, a laugh full of wildness and despair. "O my Lord!" he cried. "My Lord God! if I wanted any evidence I hadn't got, You've give it to me now. You've laid Your hand on her. You've laid Your hand on both of 'em. He can't ride by here an' see a red-headed bastard playin' round the yard an' laugh to himself when he says, 'That's mine.' You've laid Your hand on 'em." Tira rose from her chair and went to him. She slipped to the floor, put her head on his unwelcoming shoulder and her arms about his neck. "Isr'el," said she, "you hear to me. If you can't for the sake o' me, you hear to me for the sake o' him,--sleepin' there, the pitifullest little creatur' God ever made. How's he goin' to meet things, as he is? 'Twould be hard enough with a father 'n' mother that set by him as they did their lives, but you half-crazed about him--what'll he do, Isr'el? What'll the poor little creatur' do?" Tenney sat rigid under her touch, and she went on, pouring out the mother sorrow that was the more overwhelming because it had been locked in her so long. "Isr'el, I could tell you every minute o' my life sence you married me. If 'twas wrote down, you could read it, an' 'twould be Bible truth. An' if God has laid His hand on that poor baby--Isr'el, you take that back. It's like cursin' your own flesh an' blood." "I do curse him," he muttered. "I curse him for that--not bein' my flesh an' blood." With the renewed accusation, his anger against her seemed to mount like a wave and sweep him with it, and he shook himself free of her. "Jezebel!" he cried. "Let go o' me." Tira rose and went back to her chair. But she did not sit down. She stood there, looking out of the window and wondering. What to do next? With a man beside himself, what did a woman do? He was talking now, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair and looking at her. "Sometimes," he said, "when it all comes over me, I think I'll shet you up. I'll leave him asleep in there an' lock you in, up chamber, an' you can hear him cry but you can't git to him. An' mebbe you can work it out that way. He'll be the scapegoat goin' into the wilderness, cryin' in there alone, an' you'll be workin' out your punishment, hearin' him cry." Tira stood listening and thinking. This was a new danger. If he shut her away from the child (and he might do it easily, when his foot would serve him again) nobody would hear. They were too far away. He was frightening her. She would frighten him. She walked up to him and stood looking down on him. "Isr'el," said she quietly, "don't you git it into your head you could shet me up." "Yes," said he, and his tone was as ominous as her own, "I guess I could shet you up all right."