"No," she said. "Worse. I guess I never've been so scared. An' I've got myself to thank. You see, last night----" "Yes," said Raven. "I got wind of it last night." This, though it puzzled her, she could not stay to follow out, with the baby up in the hut defended only by pillows and Tenney perhaps turning to ask: "You there?" "You see," she said, "it's his crutch." "You mean," supplied Raven, brute anger rising up in him against brute man, "he's struck you with it?" "No, no," she hastened to assure him. "He ain't even threatened me. Only somehow it was like his havin' somethin' always by him, somethin' he could strike with, an'--I dunno what come over me--I burnt it up." At once Raven faced the picture of it, the mad impulse, the resulting danger. But he would not add his apprehensiveness to hers. "I dunno," she said, "as you'll hardly see what I mean: but it begun to look kinder queer to me, that crutch did. All I could think of was how much better 'twould be for everybody concerned if 'twas burnt up." "Yes," said Raven. "I see. We all feel so sometimes, when we're tired out." The moderation of these words but ill expressed his tumultuous mind. That was it, his passionate understanding told him. The natural world throws its distorted shadows, and our eyes have to be at their strongest not to recoil in panic, while we turn back to strike. "And," he said, because she seemed to be mired here in the bog of her own wonderment, "in the morning of course he found it out." The strangest look came into her face: she was horrified, and more than that, indubitably more, she was perplexed. "Yes," she said, "he found it out. 'Course he found it out first thing, 'fore he dressed him even. I got up early an' made the fires. I've been makin' 'em sence he's laid up. So I don't know no more'n the dead how he looked when it first come over him the crutch wa'n't there. But he come out int' the kitchen--I'd been t' the barn then an' give the cows some fodder--an' he carried a cane, his gran'ther's it was, same's the crutch. It's got a crook handle, an' I've kep' it in the chimney corner to pull down boxes an' things from the upper cupboard. An' he went out to the barn an' come in an' eat his breakfast, an' eat his dinner an' his supper, when they come round, an' we done the barn work together, an' he ain't mentioned the crutch from first to last." "Well," said Raven, in a futile reassurance, "perhaps he thinks he's left it somewhere, and if he doesn't particularly need it--Jerry told me only this morning the doctor said he might as well be getting used to a cane." "No," said Tira conclusively, "he don't think he's left it anywheres. He's keepin' still, that's all."