Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan, understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out. Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke quietly: "Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if you're needed." He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house. Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car, drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the door. Dick was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him, reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered idly--not that it mattered--he could meet a regiment of Amelias with this callousness upon him--if Dick had beguiled her away so that she might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly. He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical ineptitude meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm. "You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his shoulder. "Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give him back his gun." "Oh," said Raven, taking his head out of his hands and sitting up. "His gun?" "He says," Charlotte continued, her voice shaking, "Tira's run away. I told him the last I see o' Tira was yesterday afternoon standin' in her own door, an' he asked if she had her things on an' I didn't know what to say. An' he said somebody down the road said you went by 'fore light, drivin' like blazes. An' you had a woman in the car. An' Tira'd run away." Raven was looking up at her, a little smile on his lips, but in his eyes such strange things that Charlotte caught his head to her and held it against her breast. "Yes," he said, "yes, Charlotte, Tira has run away. She went yesterday, over to Mountain Brook. She tried to cross the stepping stones. She's over at the Donnyhills' now. She's going to stay there till she's buried. I'll go and tell him. Where do you think he is?" Charlotte still held his head against her warm heart. "You don't s'pose," she whispered, "you don't believe she done _that_?"