When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze, while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could not get work. Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and got up. Was he going to tell her now? "I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early." "Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured. "Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round home."