"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was drowned." Tenney's eyes had shifted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of them, and they clung blankly to the tree spaces and the distance. "Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it amongst ye." "We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?" "No," said Tenney. "Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to. It's all led to that." "She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could, off those wet stones." "You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun." But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't she want to be buried there herself? "Very well, then. We'll arrange things. The day after"--he could not bring himself to put the bare ceremonial that would see her out of the world into the words familiar to the country ear--"that will be the day. We shall go over. We'll take you with us." "No," said Tenney, "you needn't trouble yourselves. I sha'n't go over there. Nor I sha'n't keep nobody else from goin'." By this Raven judged he meant that he would not interfere with their seeing Tira out of the world in their own way. The man had repudiated her. It was a relief. It seemed to leave her, in her great freedom, the more free. "Come down now," said Raven, "to my house. We'll have something to eat." That was all he could think of, to keep the stricken creature within sound of human voices. "I ain't hungry," said Tenney. "An' if I was"--here he stopped an instant and a spasm shot across his face--"she left me cooked up." "All right," said Raven. "Then you go home now, and later in the day I'll come over and see if you've thought of anything else."