He believed the man should not, in his despairing frame of mind, be left alone. Tenney turned, without a look at him, and went off down the slope. Raven watched him round the curve. Then he took out the key from under the stone, remembering it need never be put there again, went in and locked the door. Suddenly he felt deadly sick. He went to the couch, lay down and closed his eyes on the blackness before them. If he had a wish, in this infinitude of desolation, it was that he might never open them again on the dark defiles of this world. It was dusk when he did open them, and for a minute he had difficulty in remembering why he was there and the blow that had struck him down to such a quivering apprehension of what was coming next. Then, before he quite found out, he learned what had waked him. There was a voice outside--Tenney's voice, only not Tenney's as he had known it--whimpering, begging in a wild humility: "You there? You let me in. You there? For God's sake let me in." Raven was at once clearly awake. His mind was, after its interlude of darkness, ready. He got up, and opened the door. "Come in," he said. "Yes, leave the door open. I've been asleep. It's close in here." Tenney came in, not so much limping as stumbling. He seemed to be shorter in stature. His head was bent, his body had sagged together as if not a muscle of it had strength to do its part. Raven pulled forward a chair, and he sank into it. "What do you s'pose," he began--and the voice was so nearly a whimper that Raven was not surprised to see tears on his cheeks--"what do you s'pose I wanted my gun for? To use on you? Or him? No. On me. But I don't know now as I've got the strength to use it. I'm done." This was his remorse for the past as he had made it, and Raven had no triumph in it, only a sickness of distaste for the man's suffering and a frank hatred of having to meet it with him. "You know," said Tenney, looking up at him, sharply now, as if to ascertain how much he knew, "she didn't do it. The baby wa'n't overlaid. God! did anybody believe she could do a thing like that? She slep' like a cat for fear suthin' would happen to him." "What," asked Raven, in horror of what he felt was coming, and yet obliged to hear, "what did happen to him?" Tenney stretched out his hands. He was looking at them, not at Raven. "I can't git it out o' my head," he continued, in a broken whisper, "there's suthin' on 'em. You don't see nothin', do you? They look to me----" There he stopped, and Raven was glad he did not venture the word. What had Raven to say to him? There seemed not to be anything in the language of man, to say. But Tenney came alive. He was shaking with a great eagerness. "I tell you," he said, "a man don't know what to do. There was that--that--what I done it to--he wa'n't mine." He looked at Raven in a hunger of supplication. He was almost dying to be denied. "Yes," said Raven steadily. "He was yours."