"Not horses," said Charlotte firmly. "Jerry's a peculiar sort of man. They know it an' they kinder take advantage of him. I dunno why." Then Raven realized that Charlotte herself was responsible for his faith in Jerry's bargaining prowess. She had hypnotized him into considering Jerry a great fellow at a trade as at everything else manly and invincible. She was watching him now with a doubtful and anxious eye. "No," she repeated, "I dunno why." "No," said Raven, "I don't know why either. But I'll look out for it." At that instant he understood her way with Jerry and loved her for it. She was tall and heavy-browed and dark, with warm, brown tints of eyes and skin, and seven times the man Jerry was, but it was her passionate intent to hold him supreme at home and market. Meantime they were jingling along, with a chill clashing of bells, and Raven had heard all about the prospects of an open winter and the difficulties of ice-cutting, and he gathered that Jerry and Charlotte were extremely pleased to have him come. "Didn't know's we should ever set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That War an' all." Raven thought he detected in his tone a general hostility to the War as a disturber even of Wake Hill, and wondered if he should have to fight it all over again with the imperfectly satisfied ideals of Jerry and Charlotte. But Jerry laid that bogey to rest. "Not that I wouldn't ha' had ye go," he announced. "I'd ha' gone myself if I hadn't been a leetle mite over age. I dunno but I could ha' been some use as 'twas. I'm spry for my years. I never so much as thought you'd git into it. Charlotte an' I were talkin' it over last night, an' she says, 'He's forty-three, if he's a day.' How old be you?" "Forty-five," said Raven. "I wasn't in the trenches, you know. Ambulance Corps." "Sho!" said Jerry. "Never come nigh the fightin' line, I s'pose." "Sometimes," said Raven, smiling a little to himself. "But the boys in the trenches, you know, they're the ones that did the business. I suppose the Hamilton house was closed all summer?" Jerry gave him a quick look and then took off a mitten to pass his hand across his mouth. Raven knew what the look meant. It meant Anne Hamilton: how had her death affected him? would he ask about her? and the mild inquisitive neighborhood mind would go back to the old question it had probably dropped and taken up intermittently for years: why, in their curious intimacy, had he never married her? "Yes," said Jerry, "all summer. Little Nan was over there, too, where you were, I understood." "Yes, she was over there. She's home now." "You knew her aunt died?" said Jerry speciously. It was foolish, he knew it was foolish, and yet he could not, in his craving for some amplification of the fact, help saying it. "Yes," said Raven, "I knew it."